You will need a call number to find where a book sits on the shelf.
Trinity uses Library of Congress (LC) call numbers, which are alpha-numeric codes used to identify individual items and their place on the shelf.
To find a book using the LC call number, first locate the section of books that share the same first line of the call number.
Within that group, locate the books that share the second line of the call number. Repeat line by line until you find the book you need.
1. Read the first line alphabetically.
B comes before BL on the shelf and BL comes before C.
Use this page on the library site to find out which floor the letter is located on.
2. Read the second line as a whole number.
3. Read the third line alphabetically and as a decimal.
4. Read the fourth line as a whole number. This is the year of publication.
5. In a multi-volume set, the fifth line designates the volume number of the book.
The acronym CTW stands for Connecticut College, Trinity College, and Wesleyan University. As a student at Trinity College, you have the same borrowing privileges at Conn and Wesleyan as you have here at Trinity. For example, you can borrow books for 28 days and renew them 11 times.
Follow these steps to request a CTW book:
1. Sign in
2. Click on the name of the holding library (i.e., Wesleyan University or Connecticut College)
3. Click the "Request" link
4. Select "Trinity College Library" as the pickup location from the drop down menu, then "Send Request"
OneSearch is a one-stop place to search for resources available in the Trinity, Wesleyan, and Connecticut College libraries and beyond. You can use this tool to find resources in a variety of formats:
If you want to get a sense of how much information is available for your topic, then this is a good place to start searching. You can see how much (or how little) your topic has been researched and written about by scholars in the past, and you can also get a sense of the types of sources available. Are your search results primarily peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles, or popular sources like newspaper articles?
If most of the results are scholarly, what journals are they published in (and what academic disciplines)? This can provide context for the existing scholarly conversations around your topic and direct your research strategy.
Click the OneSearch image below to go to the Library home page.
Use the advanced search option to break your research topic into multiple keywords.
When you're off campus, make sure that you are signed in with your Trinity credentials to get full access to library databases.
If Trinity doesn't have access to a book, article, or other resource you need, first check if it is available from CTW (see column to the left, "Request Books from CTW"). If not, you can still request the resource with Interlibrary Loan, or ILL.
Scholarly articles go through the Peer Review Process in order to be published in an academic journal.
The video below from North Carolina State University Libraries breaks down the Peer Review Process in just three minutes.
Peer Review in Three Minutes from NC State University Libraries on Vimeo.
