The books in the catalog are tagged with phrases called "subject headings" that describe what each book is about. When you know the correct subject heading for your topic, you can search on that subject heading to find every book that the library has on the topic.
Here are some subject headings to help you find books about African American literature:
Now offering more than 800 highly regarded reference titles from over 80 publishers, Credo Reference covers every major subject and also provides Topic Pages as a starting point for researchers.
A comprehensive literary reference database, which provides users with a broad spectrum of reference information from antiquity to the present day. It contains detailed information on the most studied authors and their works and is an essential resource for public, academic and high school libraries.