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Caribbean History

Finding Books

Search Omni to find books, journals, videos and other materials owned by the Library.  You can search by keywords, author, title or subject headings.
 
To find a specific known item, search by title or author.  To find books on a topic, either try a subject or keyword search.

Subject Headings vs Keyword Searching

Subject headings allow you to search for resources on a particular author or topic and are often more productive than keyword searches. 

Keyword searches work best if you have multiple concepts or topics and need only a few books. 

For a comprehensive subject search, search with subject headings as well as keywords.

Searching Omni

Start with a keyword search, but expect to revise it. 

Keyword Searching TIPS
 

Search Technique  

What It Does

quotation marks

Searches for exact phrase

Truncation *

Searches for all forms of a word

Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT)

Lets you broaden or narrow your search
 
To find books by a particular author/person, search Omni by author/creator in Advanced Search:
 
   wilberforce william 
 
To find books about a particular author/person, search Omni by subject in Advanced Search:
 
   wilberforce william 
 
To find books on a topic, use a keyword search if you do not know the correct subject heading for a topic. Think of the focus (or key) words that describe your topic.
 
TIP:  When thinking about keywords, remember to:
  • Search for all variant spellings of a word, e.g. voudou, vodou, vodum, voodun
  • Search for synonyms or related terms, e.g. colonialism, imperialism, imperialist, empire
  • Consider truncation to retrieve plurals, e.g. rastafar? for rastafari, rastafarian, rastafarians, etc. 

When searching for items with Caribbean content, try alternate words, e.g. West Indies, Caribbean and proper names of countries, e.g. Haiti.

Use Boolean logic to formulate an effective search strategy that can be used in searching the library catalogue or databases. My topic: British abolitionist movement and the Caribbean. Try this search.
 
("anti-slavery" OR abolitionist OR "slave trade") AND (caribbean OR britain OR "west indies")
 
When searching Omni for books, use the limiters on the left side under Modify Your Results to limit your search results to books & ebooks.
 
Select useful titles and look at the full record for subject headings. 
 
Examples of subject headings related to Caribbean Studies include:
 

♦ Antislavery movements--History
♦ Caribbean area--History
♦ Caribbean area--Race relations
♦ Christianity--Caribbean area
♦ Colonialism
♦ Decolonization
♦ Ethnicity--Caribbean area
♦ Great Britain--Colonies--History
♦ Haiti--History--Revolution, 1791-1894
♦ Jamaica--Civilization
♦ Popular culture--Jamaica
♦ Slave trade--Great Britain
♦ Slave trade--West Indies, British--History
♦ Slavery--Caribbean area
♦ Slavery--West Indies
♦ Slaves--Emancipation--West Indies
♦ West Indies British--Social life and customs

 

Advanced Searching in Omni

You can also use the advanced search option for more precise searching. Using the drop-down options within the Advanced Search screen you can limit your search to specific fields and/or a combination of fields (Author, Title, Subject, Call number). For example:

E-Books

The Library subscribes to a number of e-book packages which can be accessed via Databases. Packages that are of interest to history students are:
 
Provides full-text access to major works in American, European and Middle Eastern history. Topics covered include many aspects of history plus archaeology, area studies, art, folklore, literature, music, philosophy, political science, religion, and women's studies. Records for these books should be in Omni.
 
Historical reference compendium allows access to the texts of the Cambridge Histories series. Search or browse by topic. Relevant for undergraduates, graduates, lecturers and researchers.

 

A collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world.
 
The Internet Archive and Open Library offers over 10,000,000 fully accessible books and texts. There is also a collection of 300,000 modern eBooks that may be borrowed or downloaded by the print-disabled at OpenLibrary.org.
 
Oxford Scholarship Online
Offers full text access to scholarly publishing from around the world in 20 subjects.
 
Provides access to about 600,000 electronic books (ebooks) Prom a wide variety of publishers.