To find books, articles and ejournals search the library's online catalog WorldCat or search Databases. Please check with librarians to see if any journals or magazines are held in the library.
First, try a simple keyword search such as instrumental music. Keyword searches produce a large amount of results. This type of search is broad and less precise. Fortunately, most online catalogs and databases have features to help you refine your search terms. Refinement features may include author, year, format, content, audience, or sub-topics.
Creating a search strategy:
Next, try Boolean searching. This type of searching allows you to combine keywords using operators AND, OR, and NOT.
To narrow your results, use AND with two or more concepts. Example: Beethoven AND Symphony
To broaden your search use OR with synonymous or related words. Example: Baroque OR Renaissance - the database will search and produce results to include one or the other or both.
Sometimes one of your search terms may produce a list of results that includes articles that are not relevant to your topic. Using the operator NOT eliminates words from your search and reduces the number of results. Example: Baroque NOT Classical. The word Classical will be excluded from the search.
Full-text Databases: refers to electronic resources with access to the complete text of articles in journals, books, newspapers, theses, dissertations, and more. Illustrations, graphs, charts, and images may be included.
Checking out books
Library books may be checked out at the front desk. Please present your current WVU Tech ID card at the main service desk. There is no limit on the number of books you can check out.
Some library items do not circulate. These include reference books, newspapers, journals, and magazines.
Reserved textbooks and faculty materials are located behind the service desk known as TEXTBOOK CHECKOUT. Items on Reserve are checked out for 2 hours and may be renewed if no one else has requested the book. Reserve materials are for Library use only, although a few items may be checked out overnight if faculty or library staff grant permission. Special arrangements can be made for textbook use for an open book test.
Please see our Circulation page for more information about borrowing privileges, loan periods, overdue materials, fines, and lost books.
Interlibrary Loan Services
ILL services has merged with WVU ILL services in Morgantown. WVU will manage the fullfillment of book and article requests for WVU Tech students, faculty and staff. Items requested will be mailed to your address. You will receive a pre-paid postage label for returning the items. You may also bring borrowed books to the WVU Tech Library and staff will return them to Morgantown. Requests remain FREE to students, faculty and staff. Fees may apply to books not returned or lost.
To request books or articles please login to ILLIAD using your master/mix user ID and password.