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.

This is a screenshot showing what the filters look like. To limit to books, you would just click on books, which in this case would bring up 138 titles.

This is how to limit a Discover (advanced search) to just books before clicking the search function. (If this picture is too small please use control, or command, and the + sign to increase the size of the content on this webpage.)

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

Useful subject terms for finding books on public policy include:

• Social Policy
• Public Policy (Law)
• Political Planning
• Policy Sciences
• Public Administration

Use these search terms in the Local Catalog in combination with your topic (e.g., immigration and social policy).

Most books on public policy are in the J call number range. For more detail, see this PDF from the Library of Congress.