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The Books tab of the library webpage search box will search our library catalog, and also connects to WorldCat, which searches the collections of 10.000 libraries worldwide. Any book in WorldCat can be requested free of charge by selecting the Request Item button within the details of each book.
Most print books in the Good Library are organized by the Library of Congress classification system (sorted by subject). On the spines of each book look for a set of letters followed by numbers.
Most eBooks are available through a collection in EBSCO, see instructions to access below.
When searching in the catalog for books and ebooks it is best to search three to five terms, instead of a whole research question. Instead of searching
Why are polar bears endangered?
instead search
polar bears AND endangered AND causes
Using the words AND (in capitals) combines search terms so that each result contains all of the terms.
Looking for different results? Try changing the "sorting by" option in the right hand side of the page. By changing this option to Best Match, you can see results from other libraries on your topic. These books can be requested free of charge by selecting the Request Item button within the details of each book.
The library has access to a large collection of ebooks online in EBSCO. These ebooks show up when you do a search in our catalog and in some EBSCO database searches.
eBooks can show up two ways in your catalog search results: most of the time they will have an item type of ‘eBook’ (shown just below the author’s name), but sometimes, if the library also has a print copy, they’ll show up with an item type of ‘Book’.
You’ll always be able to tell whether we have an ebook version of a book because the ebooks will always have a “View eBook” button.
When you’re ready to check out an ebook, just click the “View eBook” button.
Clicking on the “View online” button will take you to the EBSCO details page for the ebook. (If you’re off-campus, you’ll be asked to sign in to our proxy so that EBSCO will know you have access through Goshen College.)
In the center column of the page, you’ll see basic information about the ebook (the author, publisher, cover, and a description of the book). To the left are two access options: PDF Full Text and Download This eBook (Offline). Some ebooks don’t have a download option, in which case you’ll have to use EBSCO’s in-browser reader.