Public Humanities

The best place to get started with your research is usually the library catalog, BruKnow. It's the big search box found near the top of the library homepage. When you search BruKnow, you will be brought to a page of results, divided by format, including books and ebooks, journal articles, journal titles, media such as DVDs and streaming video, and more.

For an overview of the features of BruKnow, take a look at our new resource guide:

You can easily search for ebooks by simply clicking on the Ebooks button beneath the search box of our discovery tool BruKnow as it appears on the library homepage. Or you can filter your results to show you only ebooks after you have carried out a search.

If we don't have what you need, for instance, a book is not in our collection, it's checked out, it's on reserve, etc, you have access to libraries around the world by using Interlibrary Loan. For books, try BruKnow first. If there is a catalog record but the book is not available, you'll see a link to Request via Interlibrary Loan.

If we don't have a record in our catalog, try clicking on "Expand My Results" next to your list of books. This will bring in some books from other libraries. If you see your book listed here, you'll be able to use the Request via Interlibrary Loan link. If your book doesn't appear, you can use Worldcat Discovery tor request the book from another library.

Please note that ebooks cannot be borrowed via Interlibrary Loan. If you are not in Providence and need access to a book that we don't have or only have in print, please contact me or another subject librarian and we will work to get you access.

For articles that we don't have, you will often see a Findit! link in our databases. Simply click on that to request a pdf from another library. If you have an article citation but no Findit! link, you can use your Illiad account to request the article.

The Internet Archive has digitized many books that are still under copyright and allows them to be "checked out" for a limited time with a free login. Additional public domain resources are freely available without login.