This is the basic search box for Worldcat, the best place to identify books and other materials owned by the UM Libraries and other libraries around the world. Choose the "Worldcat" tab and enter search terms in the box to get started. Don't worry about being too precise at first; you can easily narrow down your results later to books, publication date, etc. Use the Advanced Search option for more precise search options. You can also make use of the Index Labels for to search keywords that appear in specific parts of the metadata.
The default sort is Library and Relevance, meaning results held by our library are given first priority and are shown first. You can change the sort to any other option (Best Match, Recency, Author, Title, Date, etc ).
Use the facets on the left-hand side to limit your results to format (books, articles, etc.) publication date, language, etc. Click on the title of a source to retrieve the full record which gives you more information.
The full record of the item will tell you in which library the source is located, and, for books, whether or not it is checked out and its call number, which you will need to find it on the shelf. It will also indicate if it is available as an ebook. (You can find more about searching specifically for ebooks on the second tab of this page).
Use the links in the upper right hand corner for help citing the source and to email the record. In the full record of the book you can see the "table of contents" and the "Subjects" that describe what the book is about. These Subjects, like the one shown below, can help you find other books on your topic. Just click on a Subject to retrieve additional books about that topic.
You can use Worldcat to search for and discover ebooks from many different collections. The following screenshots
show how to limit your search results to ebooks accessible through the UMD Libraries.
After entering a search term, use the filters on the left-hand side of the screen to limit your search. To find ebooks that the University of Maryland has access to, select "University of Maryland, College Park" under the Held By Library filter and "ebook" under the Format filter.
Click on "View eBbook" to access the resource. You will be prompted to authenticate by typing in your UMD directory ID and password.
We have different vendors for our ebooks (such as EbscoHost ebooks or ProQuest), and their interfaces may look slightly different. There are similar functions within each interface, such as a table of contents or a "search" function, which allows for keyword searching within the book. If you are having trouble accessing a particular ebook, reach out to the library!
