Business Basics 

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

The process of writing, editing and publishing a book is lengthy, thus even the most recently published book 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 (the library's catalog) and follow the catalog's suggested headings.
• Try the same words/phases as "Keyword" searches.
• Look at the Subject Headings in book records you like to find other books about the topic.

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!

Thanks to xkcd!

Ok, yes, sometimes books have way more than you need! 

Use the book's table of contents and the book's index to see if its contents will likely be useful to you.  Often a chapter or two are all that you'll need, rather then the entire book.

And some are available online:  when you search in MARQCAT (there's a search box below too), add the phrase 'and e-books' to a keyword search, and see if that works.  (It may not, because we do have far more books in print than online ...)  Here's an example of such a search, using e-books and microfinance.

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.

However, you cannot use MARQCAT to search for articles within the journals.

I'd have liked to embed this comic, but it's too big to fit in this box!  Sorry ...