HOLLISis Harvard's online search engine for our physical and online collections. There are two different options for searching:
- Library Catalogsearchesbooks, journals, videos, images, government documents, manuscripts, digital resources, etc. It searches the full text of archival finding aids.
- Everythingsearches journalandnewspaper articles and a vast range of other electronic resources, some of which Harvard does not possess, together with the Library Catalog.
How to Get It:
ViewOnlineand Locations & Availability are usuallystraightforward, but How to Get Itcan beconfusing. SometimesHow to Get It takesyouto the full text or a HOLLIS record, but if not, go back to the Details page. If you seeIs Part Ofand then a title, copy the title and search it in HOLLIS.
Finding Books:
A keyword search (Everything) limited to Books (either pre-search inAdvancedSearch– adjust Resource Type from Any resource typetoBooks; or post-search – Refine My Results: Resource Type: Books) yields numerous book chapters and books not available at Harvard. To find books available via the Harvard Library, use 'Show Only' at the top of the right hand column on the Results page. Note that you can limit here to books not in Storage.
For more on HOLLIS
Search Tips
Use quotes "" to keep words together as a phrase, thus "shell shock" rather than shell shock which is searched as shell AND shock. Use Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) to do complex searches: e.g.,(“electronic surveillance” OR eavesdropping) AND privacy.
- Note that OR and AND must be in caps.
Find all forms of a word withwildcards. ? matches a single character and * matches multiple characters: e.g.,feminis?; gene* therapy
- Note: Phrase searches cannot includewildcards, and you cannot usea wildcard at the beginning of a word).
- 1. Search any reasonable keywords
- 2. Choose pertinent records
- 3. Look at the Subject terms
- 4. Redo the search using those terms
- or Open More options under Subject (left-hand column) and mark Include or Exclude to narrow down your original search. Copy and search Subject terms if you don't want to just narrow down your original search.
Subject terms are chosen by the Library of Congress to express the subject matter of the book. For example, the LC subject term for dronesis "Drone aircraft". The most common Subject terms in your Results set are listed under Subject on the right-hand side.The Library of Congress subject system is complex, and often there will be several pertinent Subject terms.
Note that only the initial terms in the Subject term strings are listed in the right-hand column. Thus, in Creationism -- Political aspects, only Creationism is included. It is often useful to look at several pertinent records to find these qualifying terms, called subdivisions. You can search "Creationism -- Political aspects" as a phrase (in ""). Also try browsing your subject term: next section.
You can browse subjects inHOLLIS:
- Choose the option to Starts with.../Browse
- Choose “By subject” from the dropdown menu on the left
- Type in your subject to browse.
You will see your subjectbroken down to show various aspects. This is often very useful, especially for big subjects.
A search for "Evolution (Biology)" (as an example) will retrieve the Subject "Evolution (Biology)" broken down to show various aspects of that subject. Thus:
- Evolution (Biology) -- Political aspects -- Great Britain
- Evolution (Biology) -- Popular works
- Evolution (Biology) -- Psychological aspects
- Evolution (Biology) -- Public opinion -- History
- Evolution (Biology) -- Quotations, maxims, etc
- Evolution (Biology) -- Religious aspects
- Evolution (Biology) -- Religious aspects -- Catholic Church
The various terms coming after the main terms, for example, Religious aspects after Evolution (Biology), are called “free-floating subdivisions" and can be applied to other main terms, for example, Nature -- Religiousaspects.
The Subject field in HOLLIS uses the Library of Congress classfication system. A list of free-floating subdivisions is available atLibrary of Congress Subject Headings PDF Files.
Browsing the actual shelves allows you to dip into books and immediatelygaugetheir value. You will, however, miss any books that are checked out or in the Harvard Depository. You can browse these too, although you cannot dip, inHOLLIS.
- Use the Starts with.../Browse link on top of thesearch screens
- Choose the call number system you want to browse by from the dropdown menu on the left.
- If you don’t see the call number system you want, choose “Other call number.”
- Find the call numbers for your search by doing keyword searches or subject browses and noting the call numbers for appropriate items.
The Library of Congress Classification system outline is detailed online.
If you don’t find the article you want in HOLLISEverything by searching the article title, try searching the journal title in HOLLIS Library Catalog. You may limit a title keyword search in Advanced search to journals (adjust Limit to: from All items to Journals) or Starts with.../Browseby title.
Not all of our electronic resources are searched in HOLLISEverything. To see lists of our databases, go tothe Databases page and enter a major subject area (like "history of science" or "medicine" or "african american").
