This guide informs you about research materials I think will be helpful for your paper topics. It contains the following:
As the librarian liaison for your group, you are welcome to contact me directly for help with your research. My contact information is at the top of this screen.
I have attempted to include in this guide only information that is not duplicated in our other guides. Therefore, you may find the guides listed below useful as you work with the library's resources to research your papers.
To search for books and articles in the collections of Harvard's 80+ libraries, use the HOLLIS library catalog, available at https://hollis.harvard.edu.
By default, HOLLIS searches for both books and articles. You can change this option by selecting Library Catalog as the search option, which will run a search only for books that are in Harvard's library collections.
The library uses the Library of Congress Call Number System (https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcco/) to assign call numbers to its materials.
Under this system, books about law have call numbers that begin with the letter K:
Following the class/sub-class indicator is a number indicating the subject.
Materials on topics of interest to this group are in the following call number ranges:
You can browse by call number across the entire Harvard Library collection (including books located in offsite storage) through HOLLIS. Assume, for example, that you want to browse a list of books whose call numbers start with K3185. These will be books about constitutional law and federalism.
To do this, on the HOLLIS homepage, click Starts With / Browse at the top of the screen. Select the option to Browse by Call Number - Library of Congress, enter K3185 in the search box, and run the search.
In addition to its call number system, the Library of Congress maintains a controlled vocabulary to describe subjects in catalog records for library materials. Many catalog records in HOLLIS include these controlled, predefined vocabulary terms, known as Library of Congress Subject Heading (LCSH) keywords (http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects.html), in the Subject field.
Researchers may find that using LCSH keywords in their searches, instead of random general keywords, may return a much more manageable number of highly relevant results.
Listed below are links to HOLLIS searches using relevant LCSH keyword terms. Click a link to view the its search results in HOLLIS.
LCSH subject searches are usually very broad. To limit the displayed search results, you can edit the search to add additional keywords, and/or you can use the limiting options on the right side of the HOLLIS search results screen.
Note that these searches focus on constitutional law as it affects state structure, state powers, and federalism.
A book series is a collection of multiple books about the same topic. Many publishers create topical book series.
HOLLIS allows a researcher to search by series title. Below is a list of selected book series that may be relevant to the researchers in this group. Each series name is hyperlinked to a list of the titles in that series in HOLLIS.
Use periodical indexes and databases to find relevant scholarly articles for your topic. Those listed below focus on the social sciences, including law, political science, economics, and other areas that will be of interest to people in this group.
Note that some indexes only provide citations to articles. For those, you will need to search for the journal title in HOLLIS to learn which database(s) we subscribe to that provide access to the journal.