Olympic College Library Catalog

When searching the library catalog (www.olympic.library.ctc.edu) for a particular topic, it is often a good strategy to search Library of Congress Subject Headings. That way, no matter what syntax the author uses in a title, you will be more likely to retrieve their work if it's relevant to your search.

Olympic College Library Catalog includes the collection at Haselwood Library (Bremerton), the collection at Johnson Library (Shelton), and the collection at the Poulsbo branch.

Artist's Name

The Olympic College Library catalog defaults to ìKeyword Relevance Searchî. This type of search will usually list any books in the collection with your artist's name in the title or the Table of Contents. However, if it is important to you to find a fictional book about your artist, or perhaps you are only interested in criticism of the artist, search under "Subject Heading". Click on "Subject Heading," you must replace the cursor before typing the artist's name, and what appears is a listing of Library of Congress Subject Headings.

For example : A search for Michelangelo gets

In our collection, there are twelve items listed just under the name; six items listed under the name AND ìCriticism and Interpretation;î one fictional book; and one item that highlights a particular work. No matter where you search, be flexible. While Georgia O'Keeffe is logically found under O'Keeffe, Georgia, Leonardo da Vinci is not found under da nor Vinci (except under "Relevance Searching")-- he's found under Leonardo.

In the library catalog, access to works about your artist is by last name (with a few exceptions). If you do not know the name of your artist, follow the directions under Artistic Movements.

Artistic Movements

If the library catalog has nothing under your artist's name, it means that we do not have any books or media that are entirely about your artist. We may have other information, though, in general art history books or under the artistic movement generally associated with your artist. If you are unsure what movement your artist is generally identified with, consult one of the art dictionaries or encyclopedias in the Haselwood Library Reference Collection such as:

Library of Congress Subject Headings

The vagaries of subject searching . Consult the catalog under the appropriate heading for your artist's movement. Artistic movements may be found via a time period, a country, or a movement name, such as Baroque. Artistic movements are generally found under "art":

But they may also be found directly; especially consider specific genres if your subject is not a painting:

Collections of artist biographies can be found under subject headings like:

Remember to be flexible! Look both under art with the appropriate sub-heading; look under the movement name directly. Pay attention to "see" and "see also" references. A book on the greater movement could have information in it about your artist, what influenced him or her, the principles of the movement, and historical and cultural background to the movement. Once you find books relating to your artist, scan the shelves near those books; related topics are shelved together to help you find more information.

Book Indexes . Look up your artist in the index to the book. Often indexes will carry references to specific works as well as artists' names. Be careful, though, to look under all the possible places a book may have indexed your artist's work. An art work found in a specific town or building that is famous may be indexed under that town or building name [example: Rome (Vatican)].

The Dewey Decimal Classification system organizes materials on the shelf by subject. Once you have found a classification number for books useful to your research, browse the areas surrounding that number, as you may find other books related to your subject close by. However, one thing to remember about the Dewey Classification system is that books on a similar topic may be found in more than one classification section.