Research Guides: History: Finding Books

Finding Books

Searching OneSearch

OneSearch is the CSM Library's catalog of all of print and ebooks, and millions of articles from magazines, journals, newspapers, and more. OneSearch is a great place to start your search. Once you're done an initial search, use the filters to limit to books.

Ebook Databases

Search Ebooks

OneSearch searches all of our print books and most of our ebooks, but if you're looking for just ebooks, these databases are your best bets.

Ebook Central (ProQuest) This link opens in a new window
Over 140,000 easy to access online books. Browse by subjects - literature, social sciences, life sciences, engineering and technology - or use the search box.
EBSCO eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) This link opens in a new window
Thousands of digital books, including academic titles and popular fiction, for reading online.
Gale Ebooks (Formerly Gale Virtual Reference Library: GVRL) This link opens in a new window
Select from the list of reference titles available to CSM through the Gale Virtual Library. Note that some of them are multi-volume books.
HathiTrust Digital Library This link opens in a new window
HathiTrust is a partnership of academic & research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world. Most of the titles are in public domain (e.g. were published more than 95 years ago, or are government documents)
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
JSTOR provides a full text archive of articles from scholarly journals in many disciplines, including history. The collection also includes access to thousands of book chapters.
O'Reilly Learning (formerly Safari Books Online) This link opens in a new window
This collection includes thousands of hours of video, exclusive books, learning experiences, case studies, and certification prep for a wide variety of tech-, business-related topics including programming, web and mobile design, hardware, security, and more. This database also includes books a wide variety of topics beyond technology including science and the arts.
Salem Press Online This link opens in a new window
Ebooks (encyclopedias) covering topics from history, medicine, psychology, biology, mathematics and technology, and business. Search or browse.

Finding Books

Books in the library are organized by call number according to the Library of Congress classification system, which groups items by subject (LC Subject Headings). Hence, you can often find several helpful books on the same shelf, or nearby. To locate print books in the library, first, check the noted location of the item: Reference Collection (1st floor), Reserve Collection (1st-floor front desk), Upper level, etc. Then, using the call number, locate the item:

Figure 1: Books are shelved alphabetically by the first letter or letters.
Figure 2: Then, books are arranged numerically by the number following the letter(s).
Figure 3: Finally, books are shelved alphabetically by the next letter and decimally by the following number.

LCCS History

The main call numbers used for the field of History are D, E, and F.

D	HISTORY (GENERAL)
DA-DR	Europe
DS	Asia
DT	Africa
DU	Oceania
E-F	HISTORY OF THE AMERICAS
E 51-110	Pre-Columbian America
E 186-909	U.S. History, chron., 1607 to present
E 186-199	U.S. Colonial History (1607-1775)
F 1-975	U.S. History, by region
F 856-870	California
F 1001-1145	British America, by region
F 1201-3799	Latin America, by region
F 1201-1392	Mexico
F 1421-1577	Central America

See the full classification of the classes D, E, and F.

CB	History of Civilization
CS	Genealogy
F 868.S19	History of San Mateo County
HC-HD	Economic History