Finding Computer Books

You need a book about MatLab, JavaScript, or cryptography. How do you find it?

Save your time: look in the one place that lists all of the books that we have, both print and online – the library catalog, Catalyst. It will tell you where the books are and whether they’re available right now.

Let’s look for some MatLab books in Catalyst:

• Go to the library home page
• In the search box at the top, enter  matlab [capital letters are not necessary] as a  Subject word
• You’ll get more than 300 hits, but don’t worry – just sort by year to get the most recent ones first.

Lots of these look great. Where is “Eisenhower Stacks”?

• “Stacks” are just regular shelves, not someplace special like Science Reference or Reserves

Dang, that one’s checked out.

• You can recall it – just click Request and enter your JHED ID. The person who has it must bring it back within 10 days.

Aren’t any of these online?

• Yes, a whole bunch of them are!

• If a book is online, the link will show in your results list.

• OR, if you only want to look at online books, click the little box (under the main search box) that says “Show only items available online”

NOTE: Neither library databases nor public search engines, not even Google Scholar, list most books (in any format). That’s why the catalog should always be your first stop.

For more tips on finding computer-related information, please see the research guide for Computer Science and Security.