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Why Use Books?

  • Books are extremely valuable resources when doing in-depth research on a topic! Authors have hundreds of pages to give detailed explanations and background information surrounding the various facets of your research interest.
  • Using this kind of in-depth information will make it easier to form a research question or thesis statement (or even spark your inspiration)
  • The bibliographies found in books are extensive, and will point you to other resources to add to your own resource list.
  • Remember: scholars write journal articles under the assumption that you already have a relatively thorough understanding of the topic – this means that you will likely not find the foundational information needed for your topic in the beginning stages of your research process. In this sense, books become indispensable

Omni, outil de recherche universitaire

Omni est un outil de recherche universitaire unifié qui permet de rechercher des livres, des articles et de nombreux autres types de ressources, dans nos collections imprimées et en ligne, mais aussi les collections de 16 autres universités en Ontario. Voir notre FAQ sur Omni.

E-Books

E-books are located in two different places:

  • Some may be located by using the library’s catalogue and selecting "Books & eBooks" as the "Material Type" and then further filtering your results by "Available online". 
  • E-books can also be located by searching in e-book collections. Searching in these collections is the same as searching in a database.

Recommended E-Book Collections

Ebook Central (close to 40,000 e-books in multiple subject areas)
Scholars Portal E-Books (over 250,000 e-books in multiple subject areas. Select Full Text Only to find only those e-books with full text)

WorldCat

With nearly 200 million records representing titles held by nearly 75,000 libraries you will find almost any book ever published in the English language in WorldCat.
 
 

Theses

In addition to books, you may wish to search for book-length Master's theses or Ph.D dissertations.

Best bet:  Dissertations and Theses (ProQuest).

If you are also looking for recent theses or dissertations produced by Laurentian graduates, check out our Research RepositoryLUZONE.  Note that since 2013, before graduation all Masters and Doctoral candidates MUST deposit their theses or dissertations in this repository.