International Students: A Guide to Using Pratt Libraries

This tutorial explains how to use basic library search tools to find books, journal articles, electronic resources, and more from the library's catalog. 

To search for print books, use the Quick Search bar on the library's homepage or click on the "Books" button to access the library catalog. Search for a book by title, by author's name, or by keyword. 

The catalog record for a book will give you the book's location and call number. If you need help locating a book, please ask at the reference desk or the circulation desk.

For information about e-books, or electronic books, please see our e-books research guide.

A periodical is a publication that is published at regular intervals. Periodicals may include scholarly journals, professional or trade magazines, popular magazines, and newspapers. Pratt has periodicals in both electronic and print formats. 

To browse issues of a periodical, use the journals search on the library's homepage to search across the library's electronic and print collections. The results page will show you all of the places where that journal can be viewed. 

You may need to find an article based only on a citation. Use the journals search on the library's homepage to search the title of the journal. The results page will show you all of the places where that journal can be viewed and the coverage (date range) for each database. If a database covers the date of the citation, click through to enter the database. Use the citation's date, volume, and issue information to find the article or simply search the title of the article in the database.

If the article is only available in the Pratt Institute Print Periodicals, use the citation information to locate the article in a bound periodical.

Finally, many of the research databases we offer are owned by Ebscohost, which allows users to change language settings and translate articles. 

Still have questions? Learn more about finding, requesting, and using periodicals.

Pratt has a collection of print reference books, which includes encyclopedias and dictionaries. The Reference Collection is located in the same room as the Reference Desk.  Reference materials do not circulate, meaning they cannot be checked out.

There are also quality dictionaries, thesauri, and encyclopedias available online:

• Miriam Webster English Dictionary
• Oxford English Dictionary
• Miriam Webster Thesaurus
• Encyclopedia Britanica - Academic Edition
• Gale Virtual Reference Library
• Oxford Reference

If you need a print dictionary for a class or exam, the library does have a limited number of circulating dictionaries:

To search for images, click on the "Images" button on the Pratt Libraries homepage for a guide to image collections at Pratt. 

To find films, click on the "Film and Video" button on the Pratt Libraries homepage for a guide to our film and video collections.

To find theses, artists' books, zines, archival materials, and special collections resources, go to our Collections page.