The catalog can be searched to find items owned and located in the MSU Libraries, including books, journals, government documents, DVDs, CDs, and more.
When should you use the catalog?
NOTE: You cannot use the catalog to find individual articles within a journal. For this you must search in the journal itself or use an article database.
To locate books on specific topics, begin with a keyword search in the library catalog (e.g. "Chinese Americans" and "food habits" OR "Mediterranean diet"). Click on a title of interest and follow the subject links in the cataloging record to locate other books on the same topic.
The Libraries have a large collection of international cookbooks. To locate them, use terms such as "cookery and Polish," "cookery and Jewish," "cookery and German," etc. in your keyword search. Some of these will be housed in the Murray and Hong Special Collections and you will need to schedule an appointment to use these items.
Encyclopedias and other reference tools are often a good starting point for a general overview of or introduction to a particular topic. The following is a select list of titles for beginning your search.
