How To..: Find a Video

How To: Find a Video/DVDs….

Video/DVDs are found by searching library catalogs. Understanding this catalog will allow you to more easily use any catalog.

To access the DSU library catalog, you need to first go to the library home page, your gateway for academic research. Do you remember how to do this? From the Library Home Page (http://library.dixie.edu/), select Books & More

The library catalog tells users what the DSU library owns or has access to. It includes books, e-books, audio-video, and much more. Remember, this catalog only contains representations - records - of the items listed, not the full-text.

There are several ways to access the records in the library catalog. The first option is a General Keyword search wherein you simply enter the search terms. You could also limit our searches to various fields like author, title, subject, etc.

In addition, we can search by either keyword or alphabetical browse.

 Keyword looks for the terms anywhere in the records

Alphabetical/Browse looks for terms in one part of the records and returns results in alphabetical order (authors' last names, titles, etc.)

Often, searchers will want to limit results to only video presentations of material. Certainly, some topics are best covered in a visual format. To find videos in all formats (DVD or VHS), type in the word and videorecording. 

Example: ecology and videorecording

However, to make it even quicker, you can truncate videorecording to videor$ (don’t use video*)

To limit the results of such a search to only DVDs, you can add DVD.

Example: ecology and videor$

Example: ecology and videor$ and DVD.

To find out about one of these items, click on the title.

  To learn more about a video, click on the Catalog Record tab.

• Now, along with the basic citation information (title, director, Studio of Publication, City, year), the subject headings (what the item is "about") are visible.
• Also, in many items, a summary of contents is listed to give more information about specific topics within the video. This page also tells how long the video/DVD is (e.g. 96 min.) and actors names, awards, and format.

If you decide one of the video/DVDs might be useful to you, write down the call number and location. The call number is the item's address within the library. You must use the entire call number, not a portion. DVD's can be in a locked case, oversized, AV stacks, or Blu-Ray.