History 152: Finding Books

FRANCIS

FRANCIS, the Williams College Libraries' online catalog contains all the books and other materials that the Libraries purchase. Use it to search for a specific author or title or to compile a bibliography on a specific topic.

Williams uses Library of Congress Subject Headings, which tend to be very broad. To find books on a particular topic, use the Keyword search option. Then look at the Subject Headings in the records of the resulting items to find additional sources.   If your keyword  search does not find anything, be sure to think of broader ways of describing your topic.

Use the Look Inside button to see the table of contents, book cover, and summary of books (mostly for materials published after 1990). 

The Do More button will send searches into other Williams databases to find information about the book or other writings by the author.

NExpress

Using the Search in NExpress button is the easiest way to get a book or video if you can't find it in FRANCIS. Click this button in FRANCIS to see if any of our partner institutions in NExpress (Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Middlebury, Northeastern, Wellesley) have the item you want .

Once you are in the NExpress interface, you can request the book using your Williams barcode (on the back of your ID), and it will be delivered to the Sawyer Access Services Desk or Schow Services Desk in a few days. See the Borrowing Matrix for more info.

This consortium also allows in-person borrowing among members. You may borrow many materials from these libraries by presenting your Williams ID while visiting these schools.

BLC Virtual Catalog

The BLC Virtual Catalog is the combined catalog of many of the Boston Library Consortium Libraries, including Brown, Boston University, Northeastern University, the UMass system, Tufts, the Marine Biological Laboratory/Wood's Hole Oceanographic Institution, Wellesley, and Williams. It also includes the Boston Public Library. You may request books that are not available at Williams through the Virtual Catalog. If the requested item is on the shelves at another BLC library, it will normally be delivered in three to five working days.