Understand What HOLLIS Is

HOLLIS is two databases in one. 

It combines the extensive contents of our library catalog, descriptions of every item in Harvard's library collections, with another, large and multidisciplinary database of journal, newspaper, and magazine articles. 

Think of HOLLIS as a discovery platform -- a way to search panoramically across subjects, languages, time periods, and information formats.

Take Control of Your Search Results

Try some of these easy tricks to focus your HOLLIS results:

Limit your search results set just to the items listed in as  BOOKS or BOOK CHAPTERS
  • Your numbers will immediately get smaller. And with book chapters, you may discover a great resource that you might not have seen by relying solely on the titles of books.
 Limit your search results set to items that are identified as PEER REVIEWED ARTICLES.
  • You'll eliminate newspaper and magazine materials as well as books, of course, but you'll also raise the visibility of scholarly journal articles in what displays. 
Think about limiting your results to publications from the last 5, 10, 15, or 20 years.
  • By doing so you'll get a snapshot of the most recent research trends and scholarly approaches in a field (or around a particular issue).
Try adding an additional keyword (or keywords) to indicate what you're after. Examples:
  • handbook  or companion  are common words to help identify good background or overview sources. Reader, anthology, collect* (to pick up collection and collected) are also commonly used for books that bring together significant readings on a subject by one or more  researchers. 
  • criticism or interpretation are words that will bring up secondary source studies of a book, film, artwork, musical piece, play, artist or writer, etc. 
  • history is a way to get at full-length studies not just of countries or events, but also of ideas and concepts and broad subjects. 
  • debate or controversy (or  debate* OR controvers* to pick up variants), or contested or disputed are words that will often help you surface works that identify the "stakes" of a particular argument, action, conclusion, etc.  Political scientists like the word puzzle -- so consider. trying that word, too.
  • theory or theoretical or philosophy or philosophical  sometimes help surface works in larger contexts or examined via a "lens" of some kind. 

 

Know How to Build Good Searches

Operator Example Description
“ ” "The color purple"

Searches for your terms as an exact phrase.

Great for title searches. Note: quotation marks around a single word will exclude variant spellings and common synonyms.
OR NSA OR "National Security Agency"

Either term can be present in your results.

Allows you to include multiple synonyms in the same search.
NOT cellular NOT phone

Excludes any results where the search term is present.

Helpful for disambiguation. Beware inadvertent exclusions!
AND genetic AND variation

All terms must be present in your results.

Typically used in conjunction with parentheses for complex searching. In the absence of other operators, HOLLIS uses AND as the default connector. Genetic variation returns the same results as genetic AND variation.

Pro tip

HOLLIS will only recognize Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) that are in ALL CAPS. Learn more about Boolean operators (MIT Libraries guide).
( ) ("Affordable Care Act" OR Obamacare) AND "birth control"

Groups search elements.

Use when mixing Boolean operators to ensure the system processes your search in the intended order.
* child*

Matches to any word that begins with the specified string (also known as truncation).

Child* finds child, children, childhood, childproof, childbirth, etc.
? wom?n

Unspecified character (also known as wildcard).

The system will match ? to any single character. wom?n finds women and woman. feminis? finds feminist and feminism but not feminists or feminisms.

Get PDFs From Us

 

When an article you find in HOLLIS is not owned at Harvard, or is available in a printed journal volume but not online, you can ask us to make a PDF for you through a service called Scan and Deliver.

We'll send you an email when it's ready for downloading, typically between 1 and 4 days after you place the request. Scan and Deliver is a free service to Harvard affiliates.

Scan and Deliver is also an option if you want up to two chapters of any Harvard-owned book digitized for your use.

Find books

Students can borrow books from any of Harvard's libraries.

"Request Pick Up"

Select this option to have the book delivered to the front desk of your choice.

Browse the shelves

Use the item's call number to find it on the shelf. The call number is an alphanumeric code following the library name, e.g. P306 .N367 2005.  

HOLLIS clues: the item is on the shelf if...

  • The item status is “in library or storage” 
  • The location name does not include “offsite”
  • The item policy is something like "semester loan" 

Make sure you're going to the correct library building (Lamont, Widener, Cabot, Fine Arts, etc.). Once you get there - ask for help! Every library has call number locations charts, maps, and---most importantly---staff available to help you find the item on the shelf.

Track Down Copies of Books via Interlibrary Loan (ILL)

What should you do if a book you find in HOLLIS and want to use is:

  • checked out to someone else;
  • declared missing or lost in the catalog record you are looking at (alas, it happens);
  • on order (that is, coming into the library collection but not yet arrived at Harvard); or
  • in process (that is, it's arrived at Harvard but some final things are being done to get it read for the "stacks," our word for the library shelves)?

In every one of these cases,  open the full item record and look for the Interlibrary Loan option toward the bottom of the screen (under the GET IT information and just before the call number). Follow the prompts from there.

We'll get a copy of the book for you from another university library. In many cases, it will be ready for you to pick up within 4 business days.

If the item is "in process" we'll expedite the process of getting the book ready for use and you'll be quickly notified by email.