How do I find a Big Book on a specific topic?
You can go about finding a Big Book on a specific topic in a couple of different ways.
1. Browse the shelf. Many students prefer browsing the shelves to find a book of interest. However, the books are shelved by big subjects, and often students are looking for a more abstract and/or narrow topic. If you are looking for a book covering a specific concept (such as hot/cold, sticky, colors, etc.) then browsing might be more time consuming.
2. Search using the library catalog using the search strategy below.
First, you will want to think about the kind of book you are looking for. With abstract concepts such as sticky, you will want to brainstorm what kinds of things are sticky (such as jam, peanut butter, glue, etc.) and do separate searches for these kinds of concepts. It is unlikely that a search for sticky will be very successful. The key to searching is to search one concept per search.
It is easiest to start your search using the Big Books search box at the top of this guide, or starting from the Ballenger Teachers Center homepage. On the homepage, select Big Books from the dropdown menu.
Enter your search term. Remember, searching one word at a time is best.
Depending on your search, you will experience a variety of results. For "hot" we only get one result.
To be able to find the book in the Big Book bins, check to be sure it says the book is available and write down the title and the call number.
You may also want to repeat your search using alternative keywords such as weather, winter, summer, or snow to see what other options we might have. For instance, we have eleven big books that come up when you search summer.
Looking at these books, it is hard to tell if they will address the concept of hot. To find out more about a book, click on the title. Often you will find a description of the book when you scroll down to the book's details.
For trickier concepts, you may need to think outside the box. For sticky, there are no results, so you can brainstorm things that are sticky, such as jelly, jam, baking, cooking etc.
