Diversify Your Sources

• Books are more comprehensive in covering longer historical periods and different perspectives of a topic compared to journal articles. It is more likely to find sources representing broad or diverse perspectives in the reference lists of books. Many first-hand primary sources, such as memoirs and observations, are published in book format. 
• To find diverse books, your search terms need to reflect the multiple ways of describing the topic or population throughout history. Some quick background research in reference sources such as Wikipedia are necessary to identify search terms. For example, when trying to find sources about Chinese Canadians, the search term of "Chinese Canadians" will only bring up recent works after 1940s. In historical documents, other search terms such as "Cantonese", “Seiyap” or “Toisan” will retrieve more records. 
• Did you know that UVic Libraries likely have the largest multilingual collection on Vancouver Island? Here is how to find our non-English books:

1. From the library home page, click on the "Books & More" tab if you are looking for books or videos.
2. In the main search box, you can type in multilingual search terms and then click on "Search".

Subject headings are controlled vocabularies that are used in the library catalogues and databases to describe the content of books. In a catalogue record, you will find them as active links that will lead you to more books on the same topic. See an example below:

By clicking on the subject heading, you will find other books from African American authors. If you find a relevant book in the library catalogue, please remember to use the subject headings to find more. The Library of Congress Classification Outline shows how subject headings are organized under disciplines. However, we recognize that the system has a Euro-centric focus due to historical reasons. 

From our list of e-book collections, you may click on the "details" button on the right to see the collection scope. Many collections include diverse content and we list some of them here:

• Cairn e-books: provides interdisciplinary books published in France and Belgium.
• Chinamaxx Digital Libraries: a discover platform for Chinese academic publications. UVic purchased around 300 titles. For unpurchased titles, it provides a 17-page preview and users can request the purchase online. 
• iRead e-books: Chinese e-book platform from Taiwan. 
• OECD Library: Social and economic data around the world; users can search by countries or keywords.
• Project Muse e-books: With a focus on Social Science and Humanities, the content scope is worldwide.
• Worldcat (OCLC): This is a united catalogue for library collections around world. You may use multi-lingual search terms to find out what books might be available where. By using our interlibrary loans service, you can borrow these materials not in UVic collections.