Tip #1: If you are looking for a book and know that you want it, copy its ISBN and paste that into Orbis. This requires the edition of the book to be the same as the one for the ISBN you have found, but it’s an excellent way to see if we have something in print.

Tip #2: In the sciences and social sciences, most articles have unique identifiers (think serial numbers) called DOIs. If you use the prefix http://dx.doi.org/ in front of the DOI, it will automatically resolve to the version of the article on the journal provider’s web site. Here are some examples of DOIs:

10.1130/B30981.1
10.1016/j.acalib.2009.01.005
10.1103/PhysRevLett.13.508
10.3390/nu5104159
10.1371/journal.pone.0134454

So, if we were to prefix the first one, you would use http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0134454 as the URL.

Tip #3: If you want to make use of special collections, try the Yale Finding Aids Database. In science courses for non-majors, paper prompts are sometimes, but not always, open enough for these materials to be used if topically relevant.

Go to https://library.yale.edu (main library page).

We can access subject terms by typing our query into the QuickSearch box and navigating to the Books+ search results. Note that you need to click "Books+" beneath the search box to stop viewing all media types.

From there, click on the record of a book. You will then be at the item-level record, as shown here.

Within the record information are several clickable links, including subject terms. These are curated terms that are given to books based on their content, and a book will share subject terms with many other titles.

When we click on a subject term, we are taken back to Books+ search interface, where a new search has been run. The option in the drop-down box has also changed from All Fields to Subject.

Here is a second set of subject search results for books related to scientific communication.

Another option for you is to use our Orbis interface to browse nearby subject headings. From an individual item record page, go to Display In and choose Display in Orbis.

You will now be at our older catalog record version of the title, which also has clickable subject terms.

Clicking on one of these terms will take you to a list. Note that in the upper right, there will be previous and next buttons — you can browse through all of our subject headings in order here. I will click on the first heading, with over 300 results.

You are now viewing a list of books that have the subject heading we picked.

Preprint: Original version of a manuscript. This is the manuscript that is (often) first uploaded to the arXiv, and it's the version submitted to a journal. Many preprint servers like the arXiv assign unique IDs to each preprint. Sometimes, authors may upload multiple versions.

Postprint: After a journal article has been peer reviewed, some journals allow the author(s) to post an updated version of their work to the arXiv or to an institutional repository. The postprint includes edits from the peer review process, but (usually) doesn't apply the style file of the publisher. It usually provides information about the journal that the article was accepted in; the best practice is to link to the version of record.

Version of record/publisher's version: This is the version of the manuscript published in a journal volume or on the publisher's website. It has been styled according to the publisher's formatting guidelines and has been assigned a digital object identifier (DOI).