What is the Library Catalog?
The Library Catalog is the primary gateway to the Library's physical and digital collections. Using the Catalog, you can quickly search many of the Library's collections all at once.
Your searches return books, e-books, videos, articles, and streaming media that match your keywords. Results will include items in the Library as well as items in our digital collections that are available online using your Library card. Your searches can also be expanded to search beyond COD to include items at our partner libraries throughout Illinois and the United States.
Begin by doing a simple keyword search from the Library homepage or our catalog page. You can also use the advanced search screen to do more precise field searches.
Your initial keyword search will look for books, e-books, videos, and streaming media within COD Library collections. But you can use catalog "facets" to expand or limit searches based on location, item type, date, and more.
What the Catalog Searches
- The physical collections in the COD Library
- E-books
- Streaming media
- I-Share books
- Books and articles throughout the country
What the Catalog Doesn't Search
- Course reserves
- Webpages in our site
Limiting Your Results
Changing the Order of Results
You can change the order in which your search results are listed. By default items that best match your keywords are listed first, but you can change the order to be based on publication date or alphabetically by title or author name.
Removing Limiters
At the top of the facets menu, all of your current search filters are represented by buttons. You can eliminate any of these filters by clicking on one of the boxes. For instance, if you don't want videos in your search results, click the "Videos" button.
Expanding Locations
Your inital searches will be limited to items owned by the COD Library. However, you can use the "Held By" facet to expand your searches to our partner libraries in Illinois and throughout the United States.
See the "Requesting Items from Other Libraries" section below to learn how to get items from our partner libraries.
Removing Formats
You can precisely determine the type of resources that are included in your search results by using the "Formats" facet. Check or uncheck the types of materials you want to look for. For instance, if I want e-books but not books in my search results, I would uncheck "Books" and then select "eBook."
Note: Once you set your "Facets" options, these options will remain in place for the rest of your search session.
Requesting Items Not Held By the Library
I-Share
COD Students, Faculty, and Staff may borrow items from I-Share libraries when those items are not available at the COD Library. I-Share is a consortium of over 90 academic libraries throughout Illinois that give our students, faculty, and staff access to over 38 million items held by member libraries.
Interlibrary Loan
Interlibrary loan is a free service for COD Library card holders. Use Interlibrary Loan to request books and articles not held by the COD Library.
COD students, faculty, administrators and staff members, should only request items through Interlibrary loan if items are not available through I-Share.
Try a search of the catalog using the search box below. Or access the catalog from the Library homepage or the catalog page.
Also use our databases to locate articles and other specialized online information.