Finding Helpful Stuff in the Library, Part II

Look Beyond the Title
If you are looking for something rather narrow or specialized, and don’t find any books on that particular topic, you might try looking for books on a larger topic that might include a chapter on your narrow sub-topic. So, for instance, if you want to read about negotiating contracts for professional athletes, you might search for “negotiating sports contracts.” Chances are that your library won’t have any books on this particular topic. But if you do a keyword search for “sports law contracts,” you may find several books. For instance, my search of my catalog turns up Sports Law and Regulation. Nowadays, many online catalogs will allow you to look at the books’ tables of contents. My catalog shows that this book has a chapter on “The art of contract negotiation.”

Using the technique noted yesterday, at "Finding helpful stuff in the Library I," of using the best subject in the entry to find other relevant books, I can click on “Sports law and legislation” to see 45 other titles in my library cataloged under that subject. I find a few other titles that might be helpful, and note the call number areas. When I browse the shelves in that area of the library (KF 39xx), I may locate a few more books of interest.