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Finding Books in the OU Library

Both Discover and the Local Catalog allow you to find ebooks and printed books housed in Bizzell Memorial Library, the branch libraries, the special collections, the law library, and in storage, which includes the government documents collection. They also list all the journals, magazines, newspapers, microfilm, etc. at these locations. (Discover also lists journal articles, but the catalog does not.)

The catalog is a subset of Discover and automatically retrieves only the ebooks, books, journals, magazines, etc. in the locations mentioned above. In Discover, to see a list of only the books, you must use the filters, or, in "advanced search," limit the search to "material type" "book" before hitting search.

Worldcat: Get Books from Other Libraries

Search the Worldcat database to find books held by other libraries. Worldcat is an international catalog of books and other materials owned by thousands of libraries.

You may borrow (interlibrary loan) materials through the Worldcat database. Interlibrary loan is free! But give yourself time for a book to come through the mail.

Please note that occasionally the Worldcat database indicates that the OU library owns an item when the Local Catalog does not list that item. Usually, the item has been reported lost or missing and is no longer available from our library. Please contact me if you have any questions: lscrivener@ou.edu

Browsing the Book Stacks

If you would like to browse the bookshelves for books in political science, this is the general breakdown of call numbers. For more detail, see the Library of Congress Classification Outline (PDF). (Click on the broad category to get more detail.)

Most "J" call numbers are on the 3rd floor, west side of Bizzell library.

  • J - General legislative and executive papers
  • JA - Political science (general)
  • JC - Political theory
  • JF - Political institutions and public administration
  • JJ - Political institutions and public administration (North America)
  • JK - Political institutions and public administration (United States)
  • JL - Political institutions and public administration (Canada, Latin America, etc.)
  • JN - Political institutions and public administration (Europe)
  • JQ - Political institutions and public administration (Asia, Africa, Australia, Pacific Area, etc.)
  • JS - Local government. Municipal government
  • JV - Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. Internal migration
  • JX - International law, see JZ and KZ
  • JZ - International relations