Finding Books
FINDING BOOKS
LEXICAT is the catalog of the over one and a half million volumes held in the collections of the Hofstra University Libraries. LEXICAT provides bibliographic information (e.g., title, author, publisher, publication date, and location in the Library) for all of the Library's treatises, journals, government documents, CD-ROMs, audio and videotapes. LEXICAT is available through the Web at http://libweb.hofstra.edu/search/YNOTE: A search in LEXICAT will not retrieve journal articles. For help with finding articles, please see our finding articles guide.
Identifying and Locating Your Book or Journal
To find information about a book or journal, and to find whether an item is available, try these options:
- Author or Title Searches. Finding a book when you have the full name of the author or title is easy - just click on the appropriate tab ("Author" or "Title"), type in the author (last name first) or title, and press submit.
- You can type in as much or as little of the title as you want. For example: Gone With the Wind, Gone with, Gone W (use quotes to search as a phrase e.g. "gone with the wind". Words enclosed in double quotes will appear together in all results exactly as typed.)
- Keyword Searches. To locate books on a particular subject, use the keyword searching feature. Keyword searching will search all words that are part of the title, author, corporate author, subject, or table of contents (when available). The keyword search feature allows terms and connectors searching using the following operators:
- and
- or
- and not
- "*" to truncate (add any possible ending to a word (e.g. visit* would retrieve visitation, visiting, visited etc.)
- use quotes to search as a phrase (e.g. "World Trade Organization")
- Subject Searches. Once you have found a book on point using a keyword search, you can locate additional materials on the same subject by scrolling down to the list of subjects and clicking on the most relevant subject headings
- Guided Search. The Guided Search tab allows you to combine any of the above searches. For example, you can search by both author and title simultaneously, or keyword and subject, or any combination of fields specified in the pull down menu to the left of the search boxes. Limiting you search in this manner can produce a more fine tuned result list.
Displaying Information About Your Book or Journal
- Location. Once you have found the titles you are interested in, you will need to note the location (e.g., Law Classified, Reserve. or at Axinn, Hofstra's main library) as well as the call number to find the book. This information appears in the boxes under the book's bibliographic information.
- Status. If a date appears in the "Status" column, then the item is checked out. If "Available" appears in this column, then the item should be on the shelves and available for check out if it is an item which circulates.
- Finding a Specific Volume. If you are searching for a journal and want to see a list of all the volumes we hold, click on the gray bar on the bottom of the record for that journal labeled "View additional copies or search for a specific volume/copy." To locate a particular volume, type the volume number in the box, and then click on the gray bar.
Limiting Searches
- If your title or author search retrieved too many items to browse, and you would like to limit your results, click on the "Limit/Sort Search" button located at both the top and bottom of the results screen.
- A new screen will appear where you can choose to limit by author, title, subject, publisher, material type, or language. You can also choose to sort your results by date. Note: limiting keyword searches must be done on the initial keyword search screen. To revise a keyword search after you have your results, click on the "modify search" button.
- Note that you can limit your search to Law Library materials by pulling down menu which reads "view entire collection" and choosing "Law Library" on the LEXICAT main page.
WORLDCAT
- For very broad searching, try OCLC's WorldCat database, which contains bibliographic records for the holdings of over 9,000 libraries.
- If you need material that is not available in the library, you can place an Interlibrary Loan Request (link to Illiad).
OTHER ONLINE SOURCES FOR BOOKS
Making of Modern Law "The Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises 1800-1926" provides digital images on every page of 22,000 legal treatises on U.S. and British law published from 1800 through 1926. Full-text searching is available.SELECT TREATISES ARE ALSO AVAILABLE IN THEIR ENTIRETY VIA LEXIS AND WESTLAW
- Lexis: Legal > Secondary Legal > Area of Law Treatises
- Westlaw: From the directory, chose Treatises, CLEs, Practice Guides section.
To search Lexis or Westlaw for a particular title:
Lexis: Choose Find a Source Tab Westlaw: Either enter title in SEARCH THESE DATABASES box, or use FIND A DATABASE WIZARD link.