Looking for Books on a Topic?
Looking for books on a topic? See this tutorial on searching the library catalog to see how to do a very general keyword search for your subject in the library catalog, find a relevant book, check under Availability to see how you can access it in print (look for the library, call number [book location] and availability) or online (look for the full text link), and find the subject headings.
Google Books
Cornell has a partnership with Google and has scanned lots of books which are available to you online.
Keep Up on Literature in Your Field: Current Awareness Tools
JournalTOCS - One-stop shopping for Tables of Contents.
Use this service tokeep up-to-date with new publications by browsing, viewing, saving, and searching across thousands of journal tables of contents (TOCs) from hundreds of publishers. Free registration allows you to create a customized list of your most important and favorite journals, and includes export options such as email alerts, RSS feeds, formats for bibliographic managers, and customizable API for web pages. Note: there is a limit of 30 journal titles that can be followed.
Publishers' and Database Alerts
New Books at CUL
Find out what books, e-books, and other monographs that have recently been added to the Cornell University Library collections. You can create RSS feeds for your custom list, which will be updated automatically each month.
Find an overview report or background information
Instead of diving right into the article literature, try seeing if there's an overview report available.
- CRS - Congressional Research Reports Collection at UNTThe U.S. Congressional Research Service (CRS) is where Members of Congress turn for confidential, nonpartisan research and analysis on a range of issues. A number of libraries and non-profit organizations have sought to collect as many of the released reports as possible. UNT's collection is a centralized utility that brings together these collections to search.
- Office of Inspector General (OIG)--USAIDThis is the site for USAID's Office of Inspector General (an inspector general is an investigative official in a government agency). See especially the audit reports
- Journalist's ToolboxSupported by the Society of Professional Journalists, the Journalist's Toolbox lists web sites to go to for background information on current issues and more general reference sites for topics such as public records, expert sources, and statistics. Formerly housed by the American Press Institute.