Using the Library

I Need to Find Books

Mirlyn is the Library's catalog. You can search Mirlyn to find books owned by the U-M Libraries. It has a record for each of the items that libraries own, including all books and journals in print and electronic formats.

To find books, search Mirlyn using:

All Fields when you are looking for books on a specific topic. Type in the keywords you think are most appropriate.
Title when you already know the name of a book you want. Type in a few words from the book's title.
Author when you know the name of the author.

I Need to Find Articles

When You Know the Article You Are Looking For:

When you have a citation or reference for an article in hand and want to find a copy of the article, you want to do what is called a 'known item search.'

The easiest way to do a known item search for an article is to use the Library's MGet It Citation Linker. MGet It Citation Linker uses the Library's SFX system to give you a shortcut to print and electronic versions (if available) of articles, and to delivery options if the library does not own the journal or magazine in which the article appeared.

MGet It Citation Linker is not a complete list of journal subscriptions, so if you cannot locate your article with SFX, you should still try to look for the journal title in Mirlyn, the library catalog of the University of Michigan, to find electronic and print subscriptions to the journal.

You may also wish to consult the Electronic Journals & Newspapers List.

When You Know the Topic of the Article:

If you are looking for an article or articles on a particular subject or topic, you will want to use what is known as a 'bibliographic database or index'. The bibliographic databases and indexes offered by the Library often focus on a specific area like engineering, social sciences, or film scripts.

Finding the right database for your topic is the first step, and Search Tools can help. On the main page of Search Tools you can do a 'Quick Search' using one of 11 pre-selected, subject-based database groups. You can use Search Tools to browse a database by subject or to search for a particular database.

Once you have done your search in a subject database, look for the phrase 'Availability at U-M' or to locate the article either online or in the print at the Library.

I Need to Find Databases and Indexes

Books (and CDs, DVDs, etc.) are great sources of information, but there is more to library research than finding information in a particular book. Mirlyn, the Library's catalog, will tell you if the Library has a particular book, journal, CD or DVD, but if you want to know what is in a book, or need an article from a magazine or scholarly journal, or want to know if a person was mentioned in a recording, you need to use databases and indexes.

The databases and indexes the Library offers often focus on a specific area like engineering, or literature, or nursing, or sociology, or many other areas. (This makes them different from Mirlyn, which includes resources on just about any topic you can imagine ... but often only allows you to search what you would find on the cover of the thing you are looking for.) The Library purchases access -- in other words, we offer databases that you cannot see on the free web -- to hundreds of these subject specific databases on your behalf.

Finding the right database for your topic is the first step, and Search Tools can help. On its main page you can do a "Quick Search" using one of the 11 pre-selected, subject-based database groups. You can use Search Tools to browse databases by subject or to search for a particular database. You can even use Search Tools to build your own groups of databases that you can later search all at once, saving time and effort!

For additional information on Search Tools, see our Search Tools guide.