Guide for St. George's Ascot Visiting Scholars

• The W&M Libraries hold about 1.5 million volumes, most of which are in the main W&M library (Swem)
• There are several branch libraries on campus (Law, Education, Business, etc) from which scholars can also order books.
• W&M Libraries is in a lending consortium that provides access to millions of additional volumes.

W&M using Library of Congress call numbers. Pointers:

• All letters are read alphabetically. A is before B, L is before LA, LA is before LB.
• All numbers are whole numbers. 8 is before 9, 9 is before 800, 805 is before 806, etc.
• In this example, E806. B496 1991 the blocks would be E then 806 then B then 496

Notice that some books will have locations other than swem (Ex. Richard Bland). These can be ordered through the catalog and picked up at the circulation desk, but the fetching service takes about 24 hours.

• Don't forget to limit to Books and Ebooks
• Narrow the search results by limiting publication date
• Use AND to narrow the results by adding new search terms & keywords
• Keep it Simple! Only use a few search terms at a time
  • Example: "New Deal" AND history AND "united States"
• When you find a book on your topic, open it and pay attention to the subject terms
  • Example, the official library of congress term for the New Deal is New Deal, 1933-1939
• Skim books to see why they are in the results