About Swain’s Collections
Overview |
Locating Materials |
Collection Development Policy |
Notable Acquisitions |
Suggestions for Purchase
Locating Materials
Shelving Locations at Swain |
Using the Library Catalog or the e-Journals Page
Shelving Locations at Swain
The Swain Library has several locations within the library: Serials, Stacks, Reference,
Theses, and Reserves (see the
Swain Floorplan).
Please ask staff for assistance if you are unable to locate needed items.
- Journals and review serials are shelved in Serials area.
- Current issues of journals are displayed in the main hallway.
- Older issues are shelved in compact shelving at the rear of the library.
- For a number of journals, volumes published before 1995 are stored at the auxiliary
library, SAL3. Delivery of these journals may be requested through
Socrates.
- Books are shelved by call number in the Stacks area, located
in the first room to the right off of the main hallway.
- Reference materials are shelved by call number in the Reference
room, the first room to the left off of the main hallway.
- Dissertations and Theses are shelved in the Theses area, located
at the rear of the library on the left side. Swain has theses from the mid-1950s.
Theses granted before the mid-1950s are shelved in the Stanford Auxiliary Libraries
(SAL).
- Reserve materials are stored behind the circulation desk. Request
needed items from staff, using the author’s last name. Reserve materials do
not circulate overnight. Reserve materials include items needed for courses, a few
heavily used reference titles, software, and other multimedia.
Using the Library Catalog or the e-Journals Page to Locate Materials
To find library materials, search
Socrates,
Stanford’s Library Catalog, or
Stanford’s e-Journals page.
Swain also maintains its own
Journal List.
Socrates Search Tips
- Journals: Search Socrates or the e-Journals page to see if SULAIR owns a title.
- Use full keywords, not abbreviations in Socrates.
- Try browsing by periodical title if you get too many results in Socrates. This is especially
helpful for single word titles such as Science and Nature.
- Try doing the same search in the Combined Search form (see tab
at top right in Socrates) and sort results by title.
- Enter publisher name plus periodical title to refine results. Examples:
- Science and AAAS
- Nature and Nature
- Note year in brief display is first year of publication.
- View record in Long display for holdings information and for access to the online version.
- Series: Search series name and volume by doing a Series search in Socrates.
- Try searching the name of the series as a Title if you do not find anything by Series.
- Some items can also be searched using the title, editor, or subject for a particular volume.
- Example: ACS Symposium Series, volume 220. Search “ACS 220” as a Series
search in Socrates.
- Authors: can be a person, government agency, corporation, etc. Avoid
using initials when searching in Socrates.
- Try browsing for author instead of searching if you get too many results in Socrates.
- Faculty advisor has been added to the catalog records for virtually all dissertations and
theses in chemistry and chemical engineering. Browse by last name. The word “advisor”
has been added after the name.
- Subjects: Library of Congress Subject Headings are used in the subject
index, not keywords. Search Everything to do the broadest type of search as this includes the
title, subject terms, and table of contents information that is stored as notes.
- Call Numbers: includes LC, Dewey, and other specialized classification
schemes that are used in some libraries. Only one library can be searched at a time.
