How do I find books and ebooks in OneSearch?
To begin, establish what keywords you want to use for your search. These keywords should be very relevant to the topic you are researching. When you begin entering the words in the OneSearch search box, facets - or options for what kind of item you're looking for - appear under the search box. Click BC Library Books & eBooks to limit your search to books and ebooks. If you hit enter too soon, it's okay. You can find the correct facet after doing the search by clicking the "Everything" dropdown arrow to the side of the search box.
Using the Search Anything bar:
Your search results should now be all books and ebooks, but don't be surprised if you see some stray videos or articles in your result. At this point you now need to limit your search to either print books or ebooks.
How do I refine my search results?
The number of search results you get can be overwhelming. Even with the facet for BC Library Books & eBooks selected, the results include all books and ebooks that correspond to your search. Between the print and electronic book collections you have access to over 250,000 items! Luckily, you can narrow down (refine) your results with the options in the left-hand margin under "Refine my results".
- If you only want physical print books, click "Held by library in print."
- If you only want ebooks, click two limiters: the first, "Available online" and the second "Books" which is found under "Resource Type." With "Available online" and "Books" both selected, your results will be online books.
Be sure to note that some of the online results may also be journal articles or conference papers, so look at the label for each result.
What information do I need to find the book on the shelf in the BC Library?
Once you have search results, click on a book that interests you. This is the next screen you'll see.
For print books you will see the citation information, description, collection, call number, and status. Always check the status first to make sure it says "Available" before looking for it on the shelf. Then check which collection it can be found in. If it says "General Collection" it is in the white-labeled bookshelves, and if it says "Reference Collection" it is in the green-labeled bookshelves. If it says "Delano Library", it's at the Delano Campus, and BCSW is located at BC's Southwest Campus. Lastly, always write down the entire call number! On the "Call Numbers" and "Library Organization" tabs of this guide you read how to use the call number to find a book on the shelf.
Ebooks
If you've limited your search to ebooks, you won't see a call number, since the book is not physically in the library. Instead you'll see a section on the page called "View Online" which will include a link(s) to the database that has that ebook. Click there and you'll be taken directly to the ebook.
This is usually the screen you will see when you link to the ebook, depending on which database the book is in. To view the full text of the book, click the "PDF Full Text" link in the upper left of the page. This will open a PDF viewer where you can begin to read and use the ebook.
