Remember to try keyword searching in addition to subject searching. This search method often locates different or additional material, especially when the search words are new terminology, jargon or older terms. Check for bibliography notes in secondary sources. This will often lead you to listings of primary source materials or other secondary sources. The catalog contains electronic bibliographic records for books, video recordings, CD-ROMs, periodicals and sound recordings.
Research usually begins with a subject search in the Library Catalog.
Subject headings, derived from the standardized subject headings of the Library of Congress, are assigned to each record in the catalog. Listings of subject headings can be found in the large red volumes near the Reference Desk. In this Library, our government publications are accessed primarily by MarciveWeb, an internet version of the U.S. Government Printing Office's Monthly Catalog, which indexes most U.S. government documents published and distributed to depository libraries since 1976. Access points include keyword, subject and issuing agency. The publications in Bowdoin's Government Documents Collection are arranged by the Sudocs classification scheme, and you can locate the document in the Government Documents Collection with that number.