FYS 100 (27): Shapes of Desire: Love Poetry: Finding Books and Journal Articles

To search for books in Boatwright, use the Books and More  link. When dealing with a topic that can be used in many fields it is best to add a second word that describes your area of interest,  for example, "sex" and "poetry".  Start with a keyword search and when you have found one or two relevant books, examine their subjects headings to help guide further searching,   Remember that books are generally on broad topics and that you are not searching the full text, only the titles, subject headings, and--if you're lucky--the table of contents.

If you are looking for information on a person, you should first use that person's name in a keyword search.  However, many books will have information on persons that is not evident from the information in the catalog.  To find these books, look for books on the area of endeavor or historical events in which your person of interest was involved. In the case of research on a literary figure, books on the time period, genre, literary movement, theme, or character type may be useful, even if they don't discuss the work or person who is the immediate subject of your research.