Search for books

Searching for books isn't too complicated - there are a few basic ways to do this:

  1. Start your search on the library homepage with the Search Our Collections option at the top of the page. Just select the "All Books" options from the drop-down menu under Search Our Collections, and then enter your search terms in the search box.

    Screenshot of Penfield Library homepage showing "All Books" selected from the Search Our Collections dropdown.

  2. If you've searched for something from the homepage but you didn't select All Books, you can narrow your results by selecting "Books" under the Resource type heading on the left.

    Screenshot of Primo results page with arrow pointing to 'Books' under Resource Type heading

  3. You can also click on the "Find Sources" option at the top of homepage and select "Search Our Collections" from the "Start Here" menu.

    Screenshot of Penfield Library homepage showing the "Search Our Collections" option in the "Find Sources" menu.

Search by Company Name or Industry

Like we did when using databases to search for articles and company information, we'll also use keyword searching when looking for books in the library's catalog. 

If you selected a large, publicly-traded company then you may likely be able to find books about your company. For smaller, newer, private, non-profit, or local companies you may have better success searching for books about their related industries.

In the first example below we searched for Google, a large company, and found over 3,000 books. 

Screenshot of library catalog search results using "google" as a keyword.

In the next example below, we found that the library owns just one book about a smaller, privately owned company called Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. 

Screenshot of single search result for Dinosaur Bar-B-Que in library catalog.

In some cases, you may not find any books about your company. You should then try searching by industry. Since Dinosaur Bar-B-Que is a restaurant, we searched for books about the restaurant industry and found over 2,000 results. You can also add a region or city to get better results. Visit Penfield's Search Basics guide for additional tips and examples.

Screenshot of search results in library catalog using "restaurant AND industry" as keywords.

How-To Video

The tutorial video below will introduce you to finding articles and books about your company. Note that this video was created during Penfield Library's pandemic closure. Penfield is open for visits, and current hours are available on the Penfield website.