Finding Books
Search at Oberlin
You can access many books, ebooks, journal articles, and other sources at Oberlin. The resources below will help you to find everything we have at Oberlin and can access via other libraries in Ohio and worldwide.
- OBIS: Catalog of the Oberlin College Library This link opens in a new windowSearch for books, journals, databases, etc. at Oberlin College.
- Summon This link opens in a new windowSearches more than 300 million items - books, scholarly articles, newspaper articles, data, digital audio, digital video, digital images, government documents and more. It draws from the library catalog (OBIS), many of the full text and article indexing databases, as well as digital repositories from colleges, universities, research centers, and other open-access archives on the web.
Tip: Looking for book chapters? Search with Summon.
Academic Libraries in Ohio
- OhioLINK Library Catalog This link opens in a new windowOhioLINK Library Catalog is a combined catalog of over 7.8 million books and other library materials from many of Ohio's universities, colleges, community colleges and the State Library of Ohio. OhioLINK's design allows you to transfer a search from your local library catalog to the OhioLINK combined catalog with the touch of a button. The OhioLINK catalog provides immediate access to the library holdings of the whole system, including current availability status. Requested books and other materials are delivered to your library within a few days. Catalog entries for electronic books and journals link directly to those resources.
Tip: To request an item in OhioLINK, click "Request" and select Oberlin as your school. See our step-by-step guide for help.
Libraries Worldwide
- WorldCat: FirstSearch This link opens in a new windowSearch the combined catalog of thousands of libraries around the world. It includes books, films, journals, magazines, newspapers, scores, and many other sources. It does not include entries for individual article titles or stories in journals, magazines, newspapers, or book chapters.
Tip: When viewing a record, click "Search OhioLINK catalog" or "Find A Copy" to see if a copy is available. Use "Find A Copy" to receive a link to place an interlibrary loan request if needed.
Published Primary Sources in OBIS or OhioLINK
When libraries catalog published primary sources, such as letters, diaries, or document collections, we will add primary source related terms in the subject/tag on the book.
Searching with these keywords or clicking on the subjects/tags when looking at the catalog record can help you easily identify possible sources. For example, the OBIS catalog record below includes "diaries" and "correspondence" in the subjects.
Keyword searches for books like this could be:
- Eisenhower correspondence
- Roosevelt speeches
- Rachel Carson letters
Helpful Words in Library Catalog Subjects/Tags
- Sources
- Documents
- Correspondence
- Diaries
- Interviews
- Pamphlets
- Pictorial Works
- Personal narratives
- Maps
- Speeches
Interlibrary Loan
Can't find what you need at Oberlin? For books, try OhioLINK. For books not available through OhioLINK and for other types of materials, use Interlibrary Loan (ILL).
ILL lets you borrow materials from non-OhioLINK libraries, including print books, scanned journal articles, musical scores, videos, theses/dissertations, and more.
Reading Call Numbers
Two major call number systems are used in the libraries: the Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress classification schemes. As it appears on a physical item, the first line of a call number is a broad subject classification. The subsequent lines combine letters and numbers to organize items into narrower, related categories.
| Library of Congress | Dewey Decimal |
| HB Alphabetically 615 Whole number |
573.3 Whole number, followed by decimal |
| .C518 Alphabetically, then decimals (may be followed by another letter) |
.W932A Alphabetically, then decimals |
| 2018 Publication Date, shelves chronologically | e.g., 573.3 W932A shelves before 573.3 W94A |
See How to Read Call Numbers from the University of Berkeley Library for more details about LC call numbers.