Finding Monographs (Books)
Monographs, or books, are your best source for a comprehensive overview of an author or comparision of two or more authors, or a detailed discussion of genres or timeframes. However, you'll also find other types of information in books. Possibilities include:
- Biographies of an individual author
- Interviews with an author
- Criticism of a particular genre, theme, or motif in literature
- Criticism of an author as a whole by one person
- Criticism of an author in a series of essays
- Criticism of an individual novel
- Bibliographies of an author - citations, sometimes annotated, of works about an author or particular work; best source for older criticism, up through the 1980s.
To locate books, you'll want to use our online book catalog, nicknamed PrairieCat. It's a shared catalog for 65 academic and research libraries across Illinois.
Use Quick Search:
- when you know the exact author or exact title of the book
- when you want to browse subjects (such as Arab-Israeli Conflict, Al-Aqsa Infitada or Arafat, Yasir)
- when you want to do broad keyword searches in the entire record.
Use Guided Keyword Search:
- when you want to look for words in a particular field (anywhere in the title, subjects, etc.)
- when you want to combine words in different fields (author, title, and/or subject)
For a detailed guide to searching PrairieCat, see Help with PrairieCat.
UIS Library Holdings
- PrairieCat, the Library's Book Catalog -- Search just UIS's Brookens Library. Holdings include: books, magazines, journals, newspapers, videos, DVDs, sound recordings, and virtually all of our government publications.
- netLibrary -- Access to over 6,000 e-books on business and economics, computers and technology, education, health and medicine, and general reference, as well around 3,400 public domain titles (including many literary classics, as long as they are copyright free).
Can't find what you need in the UIS Library? Or you live outside of the Springfield area?
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