Try amending your search terms or adding new ones (for more guidance on this click here). Alternatively, filter your results using the various check boxes on the results screen. For example, if you need full text materials tick the ‘Full-text’ box; if you need print books tick the ‘Book’ box and then untick the ‘eBook’ box, and so on. There are lots of ways to filter, including by full-text, material type, author, year, audience and subject.
For more in-depth guidance, check out the Searching WorldCat documents below.
Most of the time this will be because someone else is reading it. Each of our ebooks is supplied under licence and some restrict the number of people that can access them at once. If this is the case please try again later.
If you have an ebook open and do not take any action (e.g. turn a page) for 15 minutes you are likely to be logged out of the ebook automatically.
If you encounter a problem with an e-book and have reason to believe it is due to neither of the reasons above please let us know by emailing library@bishopg.ac.uk.
If it's an ebook it doesn't really matter - the content of the book should be exactly the same across all platforms.
If it's a journal, look under Access Online to see if there is any difference in the coverage between the different databases. For example, one might cover 2000 to 2010, whereas another might offer access from 2000 to the present. Again, the content of the journal or article will be exactly the same across all databases, it's just the coverage that varies.
If we have print and electronic copies of the same book, and/or several editions of the same book, WorldCat sometimes bundles them all together behind a single record (which could be a print or ebook record). There are two things you can do to view all editions of a title - uncheck the Group related editions box (top left of the search results screen) or click on the View Worldwide Editions & Formats link for the resource in question.
If an article is not available electronically, you have the option of requesting the item via inter-library loan.
On the search results page use the check boxes to perform your WorldCat search across Libraries Worldwide instead of just BGU. This may reveal free, open access resources as well as books or articles that our library doesn’t stock but which you could choose to request on inter-library loan. Remember also that there are many useful online resources that sit outside of WorldCat; for more on this see our Online Resources LibGuide.
Most importantly, if your first attempt at searching isn’t successful don’t assume the Library doesn’t have the resources you need. Keep trying, and if you continue to have trouble finding relevant resources ask a member of the library team for help or book a 1-to-1 training session.
It may be that we do: if we own several editions of the same book, WorldCat sometimes bundles them all together behind a single record and sometimes that single record is not the most recent edition. Uncheck the Group related editions box (top left of the search results screen) or click into an item record and click on View Worldwide Editions & Formats to view all editions.
E-books and full-text articles should display a purple button likes the ones above. If you are on campus and click on them access should be automatic. If you are off campus you will be prompted to login with your BGU username and password (the same ones you use for Blackboard). For more about this click on the Signing In tab above.
No. It is the only place to search the Library’s physical resources but it is not the only place to search for online resources. There are many useful online resources that cannot be searched via WorldCat. For more on this, and links to all of the Library's online resources, including those searched via WorldCat and those not, see our Online Resources LibGuide.