How books are published

How books are published depends on the audience. "Trade publishers" - the segment of the industry that produces books for a general audience - tend to look for books that will appeal to a lot of readers because they are a for-profit business dependent on sales. Small publishers may focus on a particular niche audience. Scholarly book publishers, such as university presses, tend to publish books that are fairly specialized and carefully vetted by other scholars. One common type of scholarly book is the "edited collection" - an anthology of essays by different authors on a common topic. College textbooks digest and summarize a great deal of information and are produced with a classroom market in mind. Libraries add very few textbooks to their collections, preferring to use their resources for primary and secondary sources that generally retain their value for a longer period of time.

In general, books take quite a while to write, edit, and produce, so they are not the place to look for the very latest information. However, they can be a good source of in-depth information and often provide context that may be absent from other kinds of sources. It's worth noting that, while books go through an editorial process, they are not fact-checked by publishers. Getting the facts right is the job of the author.

Increasingly books are becoming available in electronic form. Be aware, however, that a large number of the full-text books available free online are not current. They can be put online because they are out of copyright; the newest ones date back to the first years of the 20th century. Even in the case of classics, a newer print edition provides up-to-date translations and notes that aren't available online.

Searching library catalogs

Library catalogs describe the books in a particular library's collection (as well as material in other formats: videos, sound recordings, and so forth). That description lets searchers find books by their titles, authors, or subjects.

It's relatively easy to search for a book with a known author or title. Subjects are trickier. There are two different approaches you can take. One is to search "anywhere in record" (sometimes called a "keyword search"). The other is to use the subject headings that catalogers use. These are often not the words you would think to use. For example, catalogers don't use the phrase "World War I" - they use "World War, 1939-1945." Instead of "film" they use "Motion Pictures." 

A useful strategy is to find a book that looks promising in the catalog and examine its subject headings - usually found toward the bottom of the record. These may suggeting alternative terms may be useful in formulating a new search. And if you're truly stumped, ask a reference librarian.

You can do a quick search from the library's home page of author, title, or "anywhere in record" keywords. Once inside the catalog (or by clicking on the "find books" link) you can do a number of things: see what you have checked out and renew books that are due, create lists of books you'd like to e-mail to yourself or print out, or use the much more powerful advanced search option that lets you combine multiple terms and limit a search by language, decade of publication, format (such as video or music score), or library collection (such as Reference or Children's Literature).

A word to the wise: It's important to use both catalogs and browsing to find what's inside our books. Subject headings will help you find which sections of the collection are best for browsing; only while browsing will you be able to locate details inside the books on our shelves. Very often the tidbit you need is found on just ten pages and can only be found by looking at the books directly.

Your user name and password is different in the catalog than for e-mail. Whenever the catalog wants to know who you are and asks for a username and password, it really wants your ID card barcode and your last name, not your Gustavus network username and password.

Some current books can be searched online, though not read or printed for free. Both Amazon and Google Book Search can work as an index that searches many books at once. But they won't search many of the books in our library, and do not search all of the books they include in their entirety.

No library will have every book you might need, but libraries are, luckily, willing to share with each other. Though it takes at the very least several days, and can take much longer, with some advance planning we can get a wide variety of books from other libraries - at no cost to you. There are several ways to do this.

• Use our catalog, but search a different library or collection of libraries from the drop-down list under the Gustavus logo. Once you find a book you want, click on "ILL Request" in the yellow bar at the top. ("ILL" isn't about health, it's an abbreviation for "interlibrary loan.") From there, you will be prompted to login using your password and last name and which library you are at. Then you will have to return to the ILL Request link and tell it when you need it and click on a copyright agreement.
• Fill out an online book request form. If you know a particular book, you don't need to find out which library has it - the library will do that for you. Leave blank any parts of the form you don't know, but give us as much information as you can.
• Search MnLINK, a statewide shared catalog. This includes public libraries, as well as several libraries that are not part of our MnPALS system, so is particularly useful if you are seeking pleasure reading and have a particular book or author in mind. It isn't terribly convenient, however, for subject or keyword searches because it usually gives you too many results to sort through.

You will get an e-mail when the book arrives; pick it up at the main desk. In the book you'll find a yellow bookmark with the due date and some indication whether it might be possible to renew it.