What Do I Use Tripod For?
Tripod is the place to go when you're looking for books, dvds, cds, online databases or journal titles held by Haverford, Bryn Mawr, or Swarthmore. It is the Trico Libraries' online catalog. Everything we own or subscribe to should be in Tripod.
How Do I Search Tripod?
Searching Tripod can be as basic as a one-keyword search. If you don't know the name of the book you're looking for, try starting with one or two keywords that relate to your topic. For example, try a search for "beloved and morrison and hist*." This will search for the words beloved, morrison, and any variation on the root "hist" (like history, historical) in title, author, subject, notes, or tables of contents fields. Your results will look like this:
Very relevant titles entries 1-62
Each result is listed in order of relevance, and after the title are the initials of the school that owns the book. The next column is the date of publication, and the icon on the right tells you whether the item is a book, a video, an e-book, etc. From here you can click on a title to get more information. Try clicking on one of the results. You'll find that newer books usually include chapter titles and summaries, and sometimes even excerpts from the book, so you can get a quick feel for how appropriate the book is for your research. Also, take a look at the subject headings listed below the call number and tables of contents. For example, for the ninth book in this list, the following subjects are listed:
| Subject | American fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism |
| Slavery in literature | |
| American fiction -- African American authors -- History and criticism | |
| Historical fiction, American -- History and criticism | |
| Fantasy fiction, American -- History and criticism | |
| Postmodernism (Literature) -- United States | |
| African Americans in literature | |
| Johnson, Charles Richard, 1948- -- Knowledge -- History | |
| Reed, Ishmael, 1938- Flight to Canada | |
| Butler, Octavia E. Kindred | |
| Morrison, Toni. Beloved |
Each of these subjects is a category assigned by a librarian to help classify the book and compare it to others in our catalog. Clicking on the subject heading will search for other books on the same subject. Right now we have 12 books in the Trico that are specifically about Toni Morrison's Beloved, and notice that some of those didn't come up in our initial keyword search.
What Do I Do If the Book I Want Is Not At Haverford?
If the book you want is checked out or only available at Bryn Mawr or Swarthmore, try requesting a copy from another library. Click on the orange request button at the top of the screen, enter your name, barcode, and library you want it delivered to, and hit go. Choose the item you want to request and hit the request button. Your book should be delivered within about a day.If all copies of the book are checked out, your other option is EZBorrow. EZBorrow searches most academic libraries in Pennsylvania and books ordered this way usually arrive in about three days.
Logging in to Tripod
By logging in to Tripod you gain access to information about your account such as your reading history, the books you've got checked out, and any interlibrary loans you've requested.
The Cambridge companion to Toni Morrison
Encyclopedia of the American Civil War