Performing Arts 

Books are useful for in-depth information; including historical context, overview, synthesis and analysis of information.

Often a chapter or two, rather then the entire book, are all that may be relevant for your topic.

The process of writing, editing and publishing a book is lengthy, thus even the most recently published books may not contain the most current information on your topic.

Tips for Finding Books:

Identify single words or short phases that represent the major ideas of your topic.

• Try these as "subject" searches in MARQCAT and follow the catalog's suggested headings.
• Try the same words/phases as "Keyword" searches.
• Look at the Subject Headings in book records you find to find other books about the topic.

Tips for Evaluating Books:

As with any source, the quality and relevance of information in books needs to be evaluated. Look for:

• Authority of the authors or editors.
  
  • Determine the expertise of the authors and does it match the subject content of their writing?
• Scope of Content
  • Does the content cover your topic to the degree necessary?
  • Is it in-depth or does it simply provide an overview with little facts, details & analysis?
• Timeliness
  • Is the content timely for your topic? This might be determined by the time period of your topic.

MARQCAT, the Marquette Libraries catalog, lists books, DVDs, videos, and CDs the library owns in print or electronic format.

Search for books on a topic using the 'Subject' search or the 'Keyword' search modes.

You can also determine if MU Libraries' subscribe to a specific print or electronic journal by entering the title of the journal.

 MARQCAT does not search for articles within the journals.

Sometimes the library does not own books and materials you need.

When that happens you can request materials through ILL (InterLibrary Loan) and have books sent from local, state, and national libraries to Marquette University for you to check out for a period of time.

Check out the ILL page for more infomation or contact the Infomation Desk.

Google Books is a great resource for finding books and gives a preview of what the book is about and often short sections to view.

There is a link to see if your local library library owns the book and you can see if any of the local libraries have the book!

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MSN: askus@marquette.edu
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Phone a Librarian

Call the Information Desk at
414.288-7556

Email a Librarian

Email the Information Desk at
askus@marquette.edu

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