How to find all your coursebooks in the library (and skip the whole buying them thing)

Hello again! Please read this!!!

So I know you've been shown how to use library catalogs before. I know you think you know how to use them...And I know you're thinking the last thing you want to read is a long post about libraries. But this post will save you so much money. Seriously, loads of money. So read it. Your wallet/parents will thank you.

Also, you'll want to do this as soon as your schedule is set. Textbooks have a cyclical price season, with prices rising with demand in the fall and spring semesters. If you can purchase off-season, you'll get what you do need to buy cheaper.

STEP ONE: FIND YOUR REQUIRED BOOKS
Summary: There are two places to look, namely the bookstore website and your professor's syllabus.

PART ONE: BOOKSTORE
1. Go to your myaccess page (myaccess.georgetown.edu) using your netid and password. Click on student>student schedule (or if you have planned your schedule, but not registered, you can collect them by searching for each class in the main campus course schedule). Collect the class codes for each of your classes (they should be in the format of four letters and then two or three numbers, ex. RUSS001 or  GOVT343). Do not close your window(s) -- you'll use those in part two.

It should look something like this - you'll see the code here is GOVT006, section 18

2. Go to the bookstore website and then click the books link drop-down to text books (shortcut). Navigate the drop-down menus for each class, and at the end you will find what your professor has currently requested that the bookstore have in-stock for you to purchase. Note that this means (a) the professor might try to add things on later, or that (b) the professor may have more reading planned for you that you don't have to purchase through the school store. So if your class result is blank, keep checking later in the summer.
3. List these books by class with as much information as is given (including edition).

PART TWO: SYLLABI
1. From the windows you opened in part one, click on the course title (if needed) and then the link for 'view course description'.

You should end up on a page like this.

2. Select your professor, if there is more than one available for the course you are registering for. You'll end up on a page about that professor. One of the options on their page will by for their syllabi. Click there, then enter your netid to login and access the syllabi that are on record.

3. Once you reach this page, you can download any that are on record. If they have one up for the course you are planning to take, then you've already got a complete listing of everything they expect for the course. If they don't, but they have one from perhaps a semester ago for the same course, then you can guess. It's sometimes a nice way to start on your required reading before you actually start the class (though of course you run the risk of having something removed from the syllabus, but extra reading certainly wont hurt you, at least during the summer).

Now, make a complete document listing all of the books you need for each class. The beginning of mine looks like this:

For the next step, we're going to see which of these books we can obtain through the library system.

STEP TWO: SEARCHING THE LIBRARY
Go to library.georgetown.edu. The catalog is in the right-hand corner. I'm going to warn you that this search function is particularly sensitive, so try to use just enough information to get your hit, not so much that you'll accidentally miss your item. I'm going to walk you through a complicated search to show you how it can be used.

Now, at any point, these are your possible means of getting a book:
Lauinger
other on-campus library
consortium
WRLC
buy it

This search process will demonstrate how you can rule-in and rule-out these possible options.

Let's say you need to find this book:

James Goldgeier and Michael McFaul, Power and Purpose (Brookings, 2003)

First, go to the catalog and search GU only for, say, the title. You'll get a lot of results, since these are pretty general keywords. Switch to title, however, and you'll only find four or five. The publishing date will direct you to the correct entry.

See, right there - bottom entry, highlighted.

Clicking it, however, gives you the following information:

Well, the hell does that mean? The three locations listed are Lauinger library (the general campus library), the library at the Georgetown campus in Qatar (which is as helpful to you as if you the book was, well, in another country...) and the CERES library. CERES is one of the graduate programs at Georetown, and as far as I know, CERES books are at least available to you. But I don't really know all the details, though, and so I would prefer to find the book elsewhere (but if I can't, I now know I have at least one avenue to pursue). The Lau book is missing, and that makes life kind of complicated.

At this point, your options are:
Lauinger

other on-campus library

consortium
WRLC
buy it
To check and see if you can find the book in the consortium, head back to the library homepage (library.georgetown.edu) and re-search for the title with the GU & Consortium option selected. This will take you into a different search.

 
You will see that the last result is the title we need. Clicking that will give you a list of locations inside the consortium in which your book can be found.

 Now, you might notice that this page contains results for GU, and therefore be tempted to stop searching using the GU only option. I'll warn you against this option, because I think sometimes the consortium data isn't as good as the GU only data (perhaps it is updated less regularly). But in this case, we see the same results as before, and then more. If you would like, you can click the "request" key to request a book from one of the other libraries. The book will be brought to lau (usually very quickly) and they will email you when you can pick it up.

At this point, your options are:
Lauinger

other on-campus library

consortium

WRLC
buy it

We're now down to using WRLC. In this case, we don't need to - there is a library on campus with the book, and a library in the consortium that can be borrowed from. If we hadn't found the result here, we could search for it in WRLC. That option will show you every library in the area to see if any of them have it. But since at this point most students will probably just buy the book (rather than try to get to wherever that library is, usually not metro accessible, if they even have the book at all), I'm not going to cover it. It is, however, an option worth exploring if your book is pretty expensive.

Now, you should update your sheet. I highlight mine to show where I can get the book, and where I have requested it. In the end, mine looks like this:

You can see that the majority of my books are available in some library, somewhere (only the yellow ones were not). By requesting them ahead of time you can seriously cut down on your overall costs.

You can also mark - as I have - the floor that your books are on. The chart for the library uses the call numbers and is as follows:

A–DJK     First Floor

DK–N      Fourth Floor

NA–PH    Fifth Floor

PJ–PLZ    Lower Level

PM–PZ    Fifth Floor

Q–Z         Lower Level

Confusing, I know. But it helps, because you can just rearrange your results by floor and march right into lay to pick out everything you need at once.

Okay, last important thing: what do you do if you can't find something, but you seriously think the library should have it? Why, you ask for help.

I was searching for a number of Russian stories for one of my courses, but I couldn't find them in either GU or the consortium. However, I was suspicious that either I was transliterating names wrong (GU uses the library of congress system, by the way), or that the stories might be included in anthologies, which Georgetown doesn't index. So I asked for help. The Georgetown library has online IM support for searching - which is basically the most useful thing about the library website. To access it, go here (library home page > ask us > chat option). The librarians will help you with anything you need. In my case, at least two of the stories were included in anthologies, and the Russian bibliographer was able to help me find them.