Our new Everything library search engine, powered by the Summon Discovery Service, allows you to search across many separate resources using a single search box. Its breadth of coverage and ease-of-use make it an ideal place for quickly finding research -books, articles, and more – on any topic. When you do a search in the “Everything” tab on the UB Libraries homepage, your search results will appear in two columns: the left side, “Books & more,” are results from our catalog;  the right side, “Articles & more,” are results from our databases.

Looking for a good book to read over the holidays? Visit Publishers Weekly for a list of  recommendations for best books titles and authors of 2011 including fiction, nonfiction, romance, mystery, fantasy and children’s.

Join us for a discussion of Louisa May Alcott’s social reform efforts and her involvement in the Underground Railroad

Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2011 @ 6pm
Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society
25 Nottingham Court
Buffalo, NY 14216

Kevin Cottrell from Motherland Connextions, Professor Stacy Hubbard from the UB English Department, and Professor Nancy Rosenbloom from the Canisius College History Department will discuss nineteenth century reform movements in Concord, MA and Buffalo, NY. Both Concord and Western New York played major roles in the Underground Railroad and the women’s rights movement, and many famous Concord reformers (Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau) knew and worked with Western New York reformers such as Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Audience members may want to arrive early in order to view the BECHS exhibit on the Underground Railroad in Western New York.

[The following post was written by University at Buffalo librarian Don Hartman.]

The UB Libraries purchase a fair amount of popular fiction (chiefly New York Times bestsellers and award winning novels) but locating popular fiction can be challenging.  Unlike public libraries, which shelve their fictional works either alphabetically by author’s last name or in categories by genre (e.g. mysteries, romance, historical, Sci-Fi, horror. etc.), academic libraries tend to shelve their fictional works in call number order.  Lockwood Library (the UB library with the largest holding of fiction) shelves its fiction in call number order—which means most fictional works are roughly grouped by author, but with works of criticism/nonfiction interspersed—a far from perfect arrangement for those interested in fiction titles only.

The Libraries’ catalog provides a method for folks interested in browsing the Libraries’ holdings of novels and short stories:

Steps:

• Connect to the Advanced mode of the library catalog.
• Under “Format” click on Fiction, then click on the “Advanced Search” button to run your search.
• For recent popular fiction, go to the right-hand side of the screen and change the “Sort By” button selection to “Date Descending”.
• On the left-side portion of the screen, there are filters for further limiting your search by subjects, languages, genres, etc.