Books
LIAS and the Cat | Electronic texts | Books from other libraries
LIAS and the Cat
The Library Information Access System (LIAS), on the Web at www.lias.psu.edu, consists of the full suite of services offered by the University Libraries, including access to the Cat, the Libraries’ online catalog.
Keyword searching finds terms whether they occur in the author, title, subject, publisher, or a number of other fields. Keyword searching allows the use of Boolean operators:
ethic$
and environment$
plato and politic$
The character $ can be used within or at the end of a search term, and masks any number of characters, including zero.
Browse searching is useful if you know a specific author, title, or subject heading:
wittgenstein,
ludwig
on the spiritual in art
metaphysics ethics-periodicals
When browsing personal names, enter the surname first. When browsing titles, eliminate initial articles regardless of language (the, a, an, der, die, das, le, la, les, etc.)
Browsing is the easiest way to see if the Libraries subscribe to a specific journal:
journal
of speculative philosophy
hypatia
Library
of Congress subject headings
Subject headings can be names of persons, ideas, or schools of thought:
aristotle
feminism
logic
pragmatism
Subdivisions break down subject headings by format, subject, location, or time period:
ethics-periodicals
logic-dictionaries
philosophy-china
philosophy-greece-history
Electronic texts
LIAS allows access to Past Masters, a collection of electronic texts in philosophy. Texts and their translations are taken from critical editions, and allow keyword, Boolean, and proximity searching.
Books from other libraries
Virtual Electronic Library (VEL): The combined catalog of the CIC libraries (Big Ten schools plus the University of Chicago.
WorldCat: The world's largest bibliographic database, and lists the holdings of over 65,000 libraries worldwide.
PALCI: combined catalogs of Pennsylvania academic and research libraries.
ILLiad: University Libraries' online Interlibrary Loan system.