Research Guides: World Languages & Cultures Research Guide: Finding Books & Videos

Books & Library Catalogs

The Library Catalog lists all of the books videos and CDs at the Cal Poly Humboldt University Library.

A keyword search is usually the best way to begin. When you find items of interest, check the catalog records for subject headings or other terms to modify your search.

LC Classification

Library of Congress Classification. Most academic and research libraries use the Library of Congress (LC) Classification to organize their collections. Unlike the Dewey Decimal Classification, used in most public libraries, LC organizes literature by author, rather than by genre. All of the works by and about a given author will, for the most part, be brought together in LC. The most relevant sections of LC for World Languages and Cultures literature and literary criticism are:

PL 2250 - 3208 Chinese literature

PQ 1 - 3999 French literature

PQ 6001 - 8929 Spanish literature

PT 1 - 4897 German literature

In the sections for the literature of particular countries, arrangement is chronological, then alphabetical within the time period. Each author is assigned a number or series of numbers. Once you know the number(s) assigned to an author, you can browse the book stacks easily. Our library uses these numbers in the Reference and print periodicals collections, too.

Call Numbers: Library of Congress Classification

DouglasCollegeLib

Other Library Catalogs

The EUROPEAN LIBRARY
Designed to meet the needs of the research community worldwide, this online portal offers quick and easy access to the collections of the 48 National Libraries of Europe and leading European Research Libraries.
Users can cross-search and reuse over 28,627,026 digital items and 175,511,348 bibliographic records.
To facilitate further research, links are also provided to other websites in the Europeana group.
World Digital Library (WDL)
The World Digital Library (WDL) is a project of the U.S. Library of Congress, carried out with the support of the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), and in cooperation with libraries, archives, museums, educational institutions, and international organizations from around the world.

The WDL makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from all countries and cultures.

WDL items can be browsed by place, time, topic, type of item, language, and contributing institution. The search feature can be used to search all of the metadata and descriptions and the full text of printed books on the site.

Each item on the WDL is accompanied by an item-level description that explains its significance and historical context. Additional information about selected items is provided by curator videos. Other features include advanced image-viewing, timelines, interactive maps, and in-depth thematic sections on selected topics (in preparation).

All navigation tools, bibliographic information (also known as metadata), and content descriptions are provided in seven languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Metadata and descriptions can be listened to on a text-to-voice conversion option that is available for every item in all seven interface languages.

Books, manuscripts, maps, and other primary materials on the site are not translated but presented in their original languages. More than 100 languages are represented on the WDL, including many lesser known and endangered languages.

WorldCat
Identify and locate resources in library collections worldwide. Connect to materials at Cal Poly Humboldt and other libraries from WorldCat records and article citations.

OneSearch Tips

Books at HSU

Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon (ebook) by Barbara Cassin
Call Number: B51 .V63 2014
ISBN: 9780691138701
Publication Date: 2014

World Languages & Cultures Research Guide