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Africana Studies

Use this guide to find resources for projects in Black Studies.

Search Options in Knox Primo

Knox Primo is more than a catalog of the Knox Libraries. Options are:

Knox Library Catalog -- items held by Knox

Course Reserves -- items on reserve at Knox

All I-Share Libraries -- items held by the 90+ I-Share libraries (What is I-Share?)

Everything -- All of the above!

Search Strategies

Searching by title or by author in any library catalog is usually straightforward. It is more challenging to achieve good results when you need to find out what books a library has on a particular subject. Two strategies work well in any database:

A. Use only relevant keywords as search terms

For example, if you were researching for the topic "the role of religion in the Black Power movement of the 1960s" you would not enter the whole topic phrase into the search boxes. Instead, you would select only the key concept terms "black power" and  "religion." 

B.  Think of synonyms for your terms

In the above example we could easily use the terms "christianity" or "islam" or "theology" as synonyms for ""religion" in order to broaden our search. Use the search operator OR to combine synonyms:

black power AND (religion OR christian OR islam OR theology)

 

Request an Item from I-Share

Search Knox Primo using the All I-Share Libraries or Everything search option. (See What is I-Share?) When you find an item you want to request from I-Share click on the link to Request Item via I-Share:

Note: You must be signed into Knox Primo to see the I-Share request link!