Research Guide | Finding articles | Finding web pages | Finding books | Citations

Finding Books about Health

Finding a good book is the quickest way to get in-depth, reliable information on most health topics. Most web searches give you a few pages on your topic with many web pages repeating the same basic information. Book, on the other hand, are 200 pages or more, packed with details about many aspects of your topic.

Learn how to find books by going to the one hour Workshop A at the Rosenberg Library or take the workshop online.

Books at City College

If City College has an entire book about your health topic, CityCat Subject search will help you find it. This should work for major health problems that affect large numbers of people. Try using your main topic keywords. Examples: smoking OR sports injuries
If a Subject search does not return any results, try the CityCat Keyword search. This can help you find a chapter on your topic within a book. Examples: smoking and women OR neuron* (the asterisk gives you neuron, neuronal, and neurons)
To find information about a specific aspect of your topic, you may need to do a subject or keyword search about your general topic, go get the book, and then look in the index at the back of the book for the specific aspect you are researching.

Books from the public libraries

Public libraries are also great places to find books about health. You can get a public library card to check out books even if you live in a different city or county. Use the same searching strategies (Subject, Keyword, etc.) to search the online catalogs of San Francicso Public Library, San Mateo County Public Libraries, Oakland Public Library, Berkeley Public Library, or others.

For San Francisco Public Library, you can fill out the application online so your card will be ready for you when you go to any SFPL branch to pick it up. Fill in the application in English, Chinese, or Spanish. Remember to take an ID with you when you go to pick up your card.

LinkPlus

Several public libraries subscribe to a cooperative service called LinkPlus. LinkPlus can get you just about any book you want within a few days, even if your local library doesn't own it. To use LinkPlus, first search the online catalog for SFPL (or another public library) Then, click on the icon:

or:

Note: you must try the search in the public library catalog first, before you see the option to try LinkPlus.

The following Bay Area public libraries subscribe to LinkPlus.

Sadly, City College does NOT have a subscription to LinkPlus. But remember, if you don't already have a library card for San Francisco Public Library, you can get one for free!

Google Books

Google Books http://books.google.com indexes the contents of millions of books. For some of those books, it can show you parts of the text, or even the entire book online. In other cases, Google Books will help you discover what books exist on your topic.

From the main Google page, look under more to find books

Type in your search terms and click on Search Books

Be sure to look at the publication dates, or use the Advanced Book Search to limit for date.

Books with Limited preview will show you some pages right online.

Do you want the whole book? Notice the title (in the example it's public health behind bars). Search by title in the online catalog for City College. If City College doesn't own the book, search San Francisco Public Library. If a title search in the SFPL catalog doesn't find it, search LinkPlus, using your SFPL card to request it.

revised by Karen Saginor August 2009