Bluegrass Music: Library Resources

Search Tools

Search Engines & Library Search

Just as information is published in different sources, like newspapers, books, and journals, those information sources are searched for and accessed through different search tools. Chances are you have used search engines like Google to search the internet for information. Search engines are excellent tools for finding information like current news, government statistics, company annual reports, consumer health information, and so on. Even Wikipedia can be useful when finding background knowledge on a topic. 

Despite the size of the internet and the vast quantity of information that a search engine can retrieve, there are even greater quantities of information that can't be found through a search engine. The overwhelming majority of published information is still held in libraries and archives around the world.

If you are looking for resources that we have here in the UNC libraries, you will need to search through the main search box on the library homepage. This will not only allow you to see what we have, but it will also allow you to access those sources.  Below are tools that you can use to search the library collections. 

The main search box on the library home page searches both the Catalog and Articles+. It will bring up results for: 

• Books
• Articles
• e-Books
• Film & Media
• subject research guides
• Articles
• Digital Collection
• Special Collections

Finding Books

The UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries' catalog is the library database for finding books, as well as other materials, held in the UNC Libraries. The search box on the library homepage defaults to searching both Articles+Catalog, which gives you the opportunity to simultaneously see both electronic materials, such as journal articles and ebooks, from Articles+, and printed books, videos, DVDs and other local resources found in the UNC Libraries’ collections in one convenient screen of search results. However, if you would just like to limit your search to the catalog only, you can do that by clicking the Catalog link, found under the main search box.

The Catalog searches the libraries collection of books, serials, and other materials.

Searching the Catalog

When you conduct a catalog search, the catalog automatically searches for all the words that you enter across the most common fields, including author, title, and subject. Here are a few tips for getting the most accuracy out of your searches. You can try:

• Use the dropdown to specify if searching by title, author, etc.
• Use Advanced Search option
• If you already have one source, use subject headings to find other related sources

Once you find an item within the UNC collection, you can use the call number to locate it within the library stacks.

If UNC doesn't have it

If you are unable to find a specific resource in the UNC catalog, you can search the TRLN catalog or WorldCat. These wil show you if that resource is located somewhere near by. If it is, you can then request the item through the UNC Interlibrary Loan (ILL) service. Use of ILL requires the setup of an account.

Refine Your Search Results

After you have completed your search, you may want to start looking at different catalog records or you may decide to refine your search results. On the left side of your search results, you will see options to help you narrow your search results more easily. For example, you can limit your results by language, which is useful if you are looking for books only in English or in another language.

Using search limiters

Use the search limits on the left side of the screen to narrow down your search. Below are some suggested search limiters to help find bluegrass music.

Library location: If you are just looking for archival materials, it can be helpful to limit the search to the Southern Folklife Collection.

Resource Type: This can be helpful if you are looking for a particular type of resource such as an audio recording, a book, or archival material. You can narrow your search to “book”, "music recording", “archival and manuscript material”, “video”, “music score”, etc.

Physical Media: You can narrow your search to “Online”, "CDs", "Vinyl Record", “DVD”, etc depending on what you are looking for.

You can explore the other limiters to see how they change the search results.