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Africana Studies: Subject Guide

Searching for Books: Use the Power of Subject Searching

Books in libraries are assigned one or more subject headings. These are standardized terms that ensure books on the same topic can be found even if the keywords are different, as with The US Civil War and The War Between the States.

You can search in GILFind, which includes all of the GSU campus libraries.

Additionally, GILFind also lets you search all of the University System of Georgia library holdings at once -- just select "University System of Georgia" instead of "Georgia State University".

You can also search in WorldCat using subject terms. 

  • In GILFind, use Advanced Search and select "in subject" in the dropdown box furthest to the left.
  • In WorldCat, use Advanced Search and select "Identifier: Subject" in any of the dropdown boxes. 

When you find a good book, look at its subject headings in the catalog record. Follow these to list other items on that topic. Or, use the subject heading terms in a new keyword search.

Examples might be:

  • African Americans
  • African American
  • Blacks
  • African Americans Georgia

And so on...

 

For example, the catalog record for Elizabeth Carmel Hamilton's book Charting the Afrofuturist Imaginary in African American Art (2023) includes this information. The "Subject" headings are links that will take you to more books on those topics.

How to Find ebooks in GILFind

You can search for eBooks from all GSU library ebook databases in the GSU Library's GilFind catalog just as you would search for traditional print books. After you search, tweak your results to show only "full access online" and the "books" format to see only eBooks.

(Are you teaching? See a full description for embedding ebooks for course content).

Help! I've found an ebook in the library's catalog and I'm not sure how to download it!

Different providers (i.e. ProQuest, EBSCO, etc.) have different requirements. Check out our Ebooks research guide for information about how to read/download ebooks.

Other Options for Finding Ebooks