Ethnic Studies: Multicultural America

Books Provide:

• Dedicated treatment
• Historical overview
• Background information
• Single view or opinion

Use OneSearch to find both print and electronic books in both John Jay's Lloyd Sealy library and all other CUNY libraries.  The search box can be found on our library's homepage:

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For print books:  write down the CALL NUMBER and LOCATION of the books you wish to find in the library.  Books are organized according to their location and call number:

Reference  (2nd floor, top level)

Reference Law (2nd floor, south side of building near bound periodicals)

Stacks  (books that circulate, see below)

Call number beginning with A-H are on the 2nd floor

Call number beginning with J-Z are on the 1st floor

Reserve (1st floor, Reserve desk)

It's helpful to consider official Library of Congress headings when researching specific issues related to ethnic studies or specific ethnic/religious/racial groups. Understanding and using subject headings for ethnic studies research can be a useful tool for accessing information. Political and social issues not withstanding, there are challenges in both the abundance of and changing terminology associated with Library of Congress subject headings related to ethnic groups and how they are used in libraries (see Beall's Ethnic Groups and Library of Congress Subject Headings for an in depth discussion and Adler and Harper's Race and Ethnicity in Classification Systems: Teaching Knowledge Organization from a Social Justice Perspective for a discussion on how the classification and organization of information are directly connected to issues of social justice, diversity, and inclusion).

SOME GENERAL SUBJECT HEADINGS:

Immigrants – United States —History

Immigrants – United States – Social conditions

Minorities – United States

Cultural pluralism -- United States

Ethnology -- United States

Ethnic Identity

Ethnicity - United States

Sample Library of Congress Subjects Headings for A FEW SPECIFIC ETHNIC GROUPS:

African Americans         

Chinese Americans

Cuban Americans

Ethiopian Americans

Greek Americans

Hispanic Americans

Indians of North America (general)/Comanche lndians (narrow)

Mexican Americans

Every book has a unique Library of Congress call number. Think of the call number as the address of the book, in that it tells us exactly where, on the shelves, we can expect to find a particular book. Books are arranged alphanumerically on the shelves--first alphabetically, then numerically--by call number. 

For instance:

HA          Alphabetical by letter(s)
1625      All HA books shelved in numerical order
.O87       Further ordered alphanumerically by letter then decimal
1999      Year of publication

The four books above are in the correct order.

See the complete list of Library of Congress subject classes and subclasses here:http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcco/lcco.html

Books in the Library are organized according to location and call number.

Location:

Reference  (2nd floor, top level)

Reference Law (2nd floor, south side of building near bound periodicals)

Stacks  (books that circulate, see below)

Call number beginning with A-H are on the 2nd floor

Call number beginning with J-Z are on the 1st floor

Reserve (1st floor, Reserve desk)

Call number:

Every book in the Library has a unique call number. Check out How to read a call number to find out how call numbers work.

Books are in ALPHANUMERICAL order (alphabetical by letter then by number)