School of Professional Development

Catalog Quick Search

Find books, journals, DVDs, collections and more in our catalogs. | HELP

Did you know that in addition to using a keyword search to find material you can also use a subject heading search to find material that a keyword search might miss?

On the library catalog basic search page use the drop down menu  to change the search from Keyword Anywhere to Subject Keywords.

Or once you find an book that looks promising check the subject headings that the item is tagged with. Click on the subject heading and proceed to find all the material in the catalog with that subject heading.

You can also use subject searches when searching for articles in databases. You can even combine keyword and subject searches in one query to get very focused results.

Examples of subject headings:

• Drug legalization
• Embryonic stem cells -- Research -- Moral and ethical aspects -- United States
• Food -- Biotechnology
• Food habits -- United States
• Gays -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- United States -- History
• Gay rights -- United States
• Genetically modified foods
• Medical genetics -- Popular works
• Nutritionally induced diseases
• Obesity -- United States -- Causes
• Renewable energy sources
• Plant genetic engineering
• Same-sex marriage -- Political aspects -- United States
• Stem cells -- Research -- Political aspects -- United States

The State University of New York sponsors the Open Access Program, and most of the 64 SUNY affiliated institutions of higher education participate in the program. Upon presentation of a valid State University I.D. from one's home campus, faculty, students, and staff are entitled to use of the collections and facilities which the library offers to its own community, including borrowing privileges. A brochure listing program guidelines and participants is available at the University Library Circulation Desk. The University Libraries offers courtesy borrowing privileges to Open Access Program affiliates.

For more information see SUNY Open Access Overview and Participants.

Remember - if we don't have an article or a book at Stony Brook that you need, you can order it free of charge through our Interlibrary Loan service.

We will request a copy from another library.

Request an item or set up an account.

Note: Textbooks are not available through this service.

Google Books is extremely useful, because it searches the complete text of a book. It can help you find books that may not come up in the library catalog. When you find a book that looks good, then do a "Title starts with" search in SEARCH to see if the Library has it.

As of 2019, Google Books contained over 40 million scanned books. Many from before 1925 are available full-text.