Sources Indexing and Abstracting Services Internet Resources Image used with permission. The online Library Catalog is the primary instrument for accessing the collections of the Bowdoin College Libraries. The catalog contains electronic bibliographic records for books, journal titles, videorecordings, CD-ROMs, and sound recordings. For the Government Documents collection and the Special Collections area, specialized indexes may need to be consulted since the records for those collections are only partially entered into the online catalog.
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 online catalog. When you find a relevant record in the Library Catalog or in any electronic index, look closely at the additional subject headings listed in the bibliographic entry to find other subject search terms to enter. Check the bibliographies of relevant monographs or articles for other scholarly publications on the same topic. If you note in these bibliographies that one author seems to be specialist on a given topic, search some of the indexes by that author's name.