Last Updated: Jul 15, 2024 Views: 1893
The TCU Library Catalog has been integrated into our FrogScholar discovery service platform.
However, you can still search just the catalog anytime using the instructions shown below:
- Click the Catalog tab on the TCU Library homepage.
- Type in your subject, author or keywords.
- Click Search.
- The catalog results page includes various limiters in the left side menu if you need to tweak your search.
- There is also a standalone ADVANCED SEARCH link just to the right of the input box.
- Click the title of any item to view its detailed record information.
- Item record
- From here you will have access to a variety of helpful citation and sharing tools plus subject headings
for additional materials on the same subject.
- From here you will have access to a variety of helpful citation and sharing tools plus subject headings
About the Library Catalog
The library catalog contains records for all the physical items in the library collection (books, government documents, videos, music, maps, etc.) as well as links to several thousand online books and journals. Note that in the case of journals, the library catalog contains records for which issues of which journals the library has in print and online (for example, whether we have the July 1999 issue of Scientific American) but not the articles inside the journals (if there's not a link to an online edition of the July 1999 Scientific American, you'd need to pull that volume off the shelves to get to the articles inside it).
When to use the Catalog…
When you're searching for information other than journal articles (books, videos, music, etc.) that you know or are fairly sure should be in the library collection. Since the catalog contains a much smaller set of data than FrogScholar (app. 2 million records versus over 100 million), you may find what you're looking for more quickly by searching the catalog.
When not to use the Catalog…
- When you're searching for journal articles.
- When you have a topic in mind and want to get an idea of what is available on that topic without limiting your search to just what's available in the catalog. In this case, FrogScholar may be a better option.
- When you're looking for specialized information, such as demographic statistics, financial data, market research, etc. In this case, one of the specialized databases on the library web site Databases page may be your best option.
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