Community & Urban Research Guide: Find Books

Use BearCat to find books, ebooks, videos, government publications, etc. about your topic that are available at NYIT. Begin with a keyword search, for example:

• new york demographics
• new york AND (harlem OR "phrase")
• new york and plan* (Note that the * is a truncation symbol, e.g. plan* returns results for plan, plans, planning, etc.)

When you find a record for a book that looks useful, take a look at the subject headings. In BearCat, these subject headings are located under the tab Catalog Records and are clickable links that run a new search. Searching by these subject headings may help find resources that don't turn up with an initial keyword search. They might also give you ideas of other search terms to use in your keyword search.

Subject headings that are especially useful for your research include:

• City planning--New York
• Urban--New York
• Land use--New York
• New York--History
• Urban renewal--New York

Book purchase requests can be emailed to me.

If you need to broaden your search:

1. Search the full text of many books using Google Books to identify books of possible interest, then do a title search in the library catalog to find a copy, or request an Interlibrary Loan, or request a purchase.
    
2. Search meta catalog WorldCat. WorldCat will identify books available throughout New York City including New York Public Library. Ask a librarian for a Metro Card to gain access to these libraries.

If a book or article you want is not available at NYIT, try our free Interlibrary Loan service. We'll try to locate the item at another library and request it for you.

• Articles Requests
• Book Requests

Students and faculty may request e-books they would like the library to purchase for use in a particular course or to support a project.