Special Collections has sizable holdings in the area of nineteenth century America literature. Discovering them in the catalog, however, can be difficult when you don't know exactly what you're looking for. This difficulty is made worse by inconsistent cataloging over the years. The following search strategies can help. I recommend always searching the library catalog using the "advanced search" mode. From the home page (library.tcu.edu), select "Library Catalog." Click the link "More catalog search options." Here's an example of a search for all the gift books held by the library:
Select the "Advanced Search" tab. To find gift books, select "subject words," which will search for Library of Congress genre and subject headings. Limit your search to Special Collections:
This will pull up a list of all the gift books held by Special Collections.
If you have found a useful item, a great way to find more like it is to look at its catalog record, and devise a search based on that item's Library of Congress subject headings. For example, the record for Kavanagh, by Longfellow includes "American Fiction" as a subject heading. By searching that subject heading, with collection and date delimiters, you can find other items in our collection.
If the item in question was cataloged a long time ago or by batch process, it may not be very detailed. If that is the case, contact me and I can help you.
If these methods fail, contact me.
