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E-mail a Tufts librarian using this form. Typical response time is 1-2 business days.

Includes books, journals, microforms, electronic resources, and much more. You can search in a variety of ways including author, title, subject and keyword.

A-Z list of electronic resources and CD-ROMS. Search for articles, dissertations, statistics and more.

Simultaneously search almost 50 databases, including the Catalog, full-text, subject-specific and interdisciplinary databases.

Search by title for electronic journals.

Browse (view) newly received materials by library or by topic. Search newly received materials by title, keyword or author, and limit to a particular Tufts library. RSS feeds can be set up on any results screen.

Search the combined catalogs of most of the Boston Library Consortium member libraries. You can borrow books from any BLC member upon registration.

Borrow materials that Tufts libraries do not own or borrow materials from other Tufts libraries not at your local campus. NOTE: To borrow books, check first via the BLC Virtual Catalog.

View details of your personal account: items checked out, requested items (titles on hold), fines/fees due, preferred searches, reading history and saved Research Pro search groups.

Renew items that are not overdue:

1. Choose the item(s) to be renewed.
2. Click Renew Items. The new due date will automatically appear.

1. In the Catalog, click Hold Item and follow the instructions.

1. Choose the requested item(s) to be cancelled.
2. Click Cancel Request. The library will automatically cancel your request.

Do a search once and have the Catalog alert you via email you when new material on that same topic, by the same author, or of the same title, comes into the library. To set up a preferred search:

1. Log into your account (https://library.tufts.edu/patroninfo/)
2. Search the Catalog. You'll see the preferred search button that you'll activate to save any search as preferred.

1. Mark authors, subjects or titles for email notification. Please note that when you get an email, it means that the item has been received by the library. Before coming to the library to retrieve the item, check the Catalog to see if it is available to be checked out and which Tufts library it is at.
2. Mark authors, subjects or titles to remove from your list.
3. Rerun the current search by clicking on Search.

This feature allows you to look at a list of titles you've checked out. No one else has access to this list. You can remove selected titles as you wish, but if you turn off your reading history, it cannot be retrieved.

The Catalog contains information about all Tufts Libraries' collections, including books, videos, software, journal titles, websites, course reserves, DVDs and CDs. You may search in a variety of ways depending upon how much information you have about the item.

Type as many or as few of the words in the title as you know:
   Example: Breakfast at Tiffanys

Tip: Omit beginning articles: a, an, the, le, la, der, die, etc.

Enter a periodical (journal, magazine, newspaper) title in the journal title search box.
   Example: Time

Search for works by a particular author, composer, editor, translator, etc. Enter the author's last name first, followed by the author's first name or as much of the first name as you know.

Tip: If you do not get any results with a full name, leave off the first name or use just one initial.
   Example: Shakespeare W

Tip: Performers, actors, organizations, and sometimes even distribution companies can be entered in the author search box.

Use to limit the search result. Type the last name (or last name followed by first name) in the author field and title (or partial title) in the title field.

Tip: Use this search when you know the last name of the author and partial information about the title.

If you know the call number of an item, type it in call number search box.

Tip: Use the first part of the call number to browse items of the same subject.

Every book or periodical published is assigned an ISBN (International Standard Book Number) or ISSN (International Standard Serial Number). If you know the ISBN or ISSN, enter the number in the ISBN/ISSN search box.

Tip: Punctuation, hyphen, space do not matter.

Type the word(s) that you think most pertinent to the items/topics you wish to find. Various techniques in keyword searching:

The Catalog automatically inserts AND between terms. To force the Catalog to search your words as a phrase, surround the phrase with quotation marks, such as "fluid mechanics."

Boolean Operators:
You can also use the Boolean operators (AND, OR, AND NOT, BEFORE, NEAR, and AFTER) to combine search terms.

You can combine various fields (title, author, subject, notes) in one search, making your search results more precise. To find DVDs about World War II in French, type:

  World War II
  Language = French
  Material Type = DVD

Tip: For author keyword searches, do not type the initial of the first name. Type last name only or last and first name.

Every item in the Catalog is assigned one or more subjects that tells what the item is about. Use the subject search if you are interested in a certain topic (called subject headings in the Catalog) and want to find items related to the topic.

Tip: No results from a subject search? Try a keyword search instead. You may get no result from subject searches if you do not know the exact word or phrased used by the Library of Congress or National Library of Medicine, the organizations that assign subject headings.

Tip: When you find a very relevant item, click its subject heading to see other items with the same subject headings.

MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) are assigned by the National Library of Medicine. The search technique for MeSH works the same as the Library of Congress Subject Heading, explained above.

Tip: If you get no results, try a keyword search.

Use to do a keyword search of all Tufts theses & dissertations. You may qualify the search to just the author, title, subject, or note fields. You may combine search terms with Boolean operators such as AND, OR, NOT, etc.

Use to do a keyword search of all electronic resources. You may search all electronic resources or limit your search to books, journals, databases, Tufts theses & dissertations, CD-ROMs, or U.S. federal publications.

CAPITALIZATION is not needed. Searches may be entered in uppercase, lower case, or mixed case.

Initial articles should be omitted. When used as the first word of a title, English language articles such as "an" and "the" are disregarded by the Catalog.
  Example: The New Yorker is searched as "new yorker"

For all other languages, omit initial articles from your search except for places and some other proper names. For Latin American countries use "El Salvador" not just "Salvador"; for the French architect use "Le Corbusier."

• The Catalog automatically converts the ampersand (&) to the spelled out word "and".
• Apostrophes are ignored. For example, O'Hara will be searched for as if it were spelled "ohara."
• The Catalog automatically converts most other punctuation marks to spaces. A title such as "U.S. Social History" will be searched for as if it were four words, "U S Social History". If you omit the space between U and S, you will get a different search result.

AND will retrieve items with both words and will make your search more specific.
  Example: women and mexico

OR will retrieve items with either word and broaden your search.
  Example: zebras or elephants

Tip: Use parentheses to group words or concepts.
  Example: (border or boundary) and (conflict or uprising).

AND NOT will exclude words.
  Example: migration and not illegal

Use NEAR to specify words that are within 10 words of each other, in any order.
  Example: cat near roof

Use WITHIN # to specify words that occur within # words of each other.
  Example: state within 3 union

Use a single asterisk (*) to replace 1-5 letters at the end of words.
  Example: child* will retrieve child, childhood, children, child's, etc.

Use two asterisks (**) to replace any number of letters at the end of words.
  Example: class** will retrieve class, classify, classifier, classification, etc.

Use ? to replace exactly one character. You can use multiple ?s to search for a specific number of characters at the end of a word.
  Example: symphon? will retrieve symphony but not symphonies
  Example: anders?n will retrieve both "anderson" and "andersen"

You can limit your search by library location on the main search screens. In addition, from the hit list display of a keyword search, you can click on Modify Search in order to limit by:

• location so that you only retrieve items at a specific library
• date to identify titles published in a specific year or range of years
• language
• publisher
• material type (printed material, sound record, printed music, etc.).

The search history for your current search session is located in a dropdown menu at the top of the results display screen after you have initiated a search. You can choose a previous search and modify it or rerun it.

From the hitlist display of a title, author, or subject search, you can click on Limit/Sort Search in order to limit by:

• date to identify titles published in a specific year or range of years
• material type (book, video, map, etc.).
• language
• publisher
• location so that you only retrieve items at a specific library.

From the same screen, you can also sort by:

• title
• author
• year
• reverse year
• call number
• material type

Allows you to collect specific records into a group and then download or e-mail the records. To add a title to your list, check the box above Select. You may also add all of the records in a hitlist by clicking the Save All on Page button, which appears at the top of all hitlists. To display your selected titles, choose the View Saved option in the upper right-hand side of the screen. For more information, see How to display/save/print/export/e-mail records.

When a book is checked out to another library user, you can place a hold on the book by clicking on the hold item button.

The keyword search results screen displays brief records with call numbers.
The author, title and subject search results screens have two levels. The first level displays a brief author, title or subject. The second level displays brief records with call numbers.

Displays location, volumes currently held at a location, special issues (e.g., supplements), status, (e.g., whether or not the title is currently received), last issue received, date of next issue to be received.

The permanent record link is a stable URL that can be used to bookmark a record. When you click "Permanent link to this record" the permanent URL will appear at the top of the navigation bar of your browser, e.g. http://library.tufts.edu/record=b1586137.

Permanent links can be bookmarked, placed on a webpage, used in Blackboard, put in a syllabus or paper, or anywhere else you need a direct, permanent link to a Catalog record.

The MARC display is the standardized electronic format used by libraries to describe each item in the online catalog. You can use this display to discover additional information about an item, such as type of material, previous publication date and editions, and alternative Library of Congress call numbers.

To print a single record, click Print from your browser toolbar or click Print from the File menu.

To print more than one item:

1. Mark the items to save by clicking in the box to the left of each record.
2. Click Saved Marked Records.
3. Click View Marked Records.
4. To print, click on Screen and click Submit.

1. Mark the items to email or save by clicking in the box to the left of each record. (You may save items from any number of screens at one time.)
2. Click Saved Marked Records.
3. Click View Marked Records.
   • To email, type the recipients address in the Mail To box and click Submit.
   • To save to a file, click on Local Disk and follow the instructions.

1. Mark the item(s) to export by clicking in the box to the left of each record. (You may save items from any number of screens at one time.)
2. Click Saved Marked Records.
3. Click View Marked Records.
4. On the next screen click Full Display (not EndNote/RefWorks), Local Disk and Submit.