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HOLLIS User Guide

HOLLIS is the library's main search interface. It includes the Harvard library catalog as well as a huge (and more heterogeneous) collection of citations for a variety of materials, including articles and book chapters.

HOLLIS Everything v. HOLLIS Library Catalog

Choose Everything if:

  • You want to explore the broadest variety of sources
  • Your topic is very interdisciplinary or very current
  • You already have the title of an article you want

Choose Library Catalog if:

  • You want book-length treatments of a topic
  • You want to search Harvard's shelves
  • You need reliable filters for authors and subjects

Choose Databases.HOLLIS if:

  • You want to find things that aren't in HOLLIS
  • You want to search a specialized body of material
  • You need search functions HOLLIS doesn’t offer

What will I find if I choose Library Catalog?

*Items on Harvard’s shelves includes books, journals, newspapers, maps, DVDs, manuscripts, images, archives, and much more. The Library Catalog also searches the full text of Harvard’s archival finding aids, as well as the tables of contents for some books (i.e. individual chapter titles).

Note: the Catalog’s descriptions are maintained by Harvard staff and follow well-established rules for author names, subjects, and other descriptive components. This is why you'll find more reliable filters when you limit your search to Library Catalog.

What will I find if I choose Everything? (NOT** everything!)

  • All Library Catalog contents
  • Catalog records from Harvard’s partner libraries (e.g. ReCAP partners)
  • Records from the Center for Research Libraries catalog
  • Additional e-books (v. Library Catalog)
  • Additional streaming media (v. Library Catalog)
  • Book chapters
  • Journal articles
  • Encyclopedia entries
  • Other types of documents
  • Many items Harvard doesn’t own

**"Everything" is NOT actually everything. It searches the Library Catalog as well as a huge index of citations. This index of citations pulls information from a wide variety of data sources. The descriptions are not under the control of Harvard staff, and they follow a huge variety of conventions for description and naming.

Up Next: Search Operators
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