McGill Community for Lifelong Learning (MCLL)

Books in the Library catalogue

Sofia Discovery tool

The Library catalogue, Sofia, uses two different formats for books: Book and Audiobook. You can limit your searches to electronic books (eBook), print books, and large print books, as well as electronic audiobooks (eAudiobook) and books on CD/cassette/LP.

There are different PDF "how to" documents in this guide for using Sofia:

• eAudiobooks and ebooks PDF "how to"
• Print books PDF "how to"
• Saving and sharing records PDF "how to"

There is a guide to finding books and media, as well an extensive guide to finding and using ebooks from the Library.

Collections of books

OverDrive: A great place to explore fiction and non-fiction e-books and audiobooks. If you are already using OverDrive to access public library books, be sure to add McGill Library as well. OverDrive PDF "how to"

• See the Library's OverDrive guide with login instructions.
• OverDrive has retired their classic OverDrive app and moved everyone over to their Libby app.

Oxford Reference: Over 400 encyclopedias and dictionaries from Oxford University Press, all in one place.

Internet Archive: There are millions of free e-books and texts available on Internet Archive, a non-profit digital library, along with movies, audio (Old Time Radio!), software (MS-DOS games!), and more.

• LibriVox is a collection of free audiobooks, read by volunteers.

Google Books: Great place for searching the contents of books. Not all books are free to read, but once a book is identified you can check to see if it is held by McGill Library.

Book reviews

See also the guide on how to find book reviews.

Book Review Digest Plus: A good place to start your search on a specific topic.

Book Review Index: Search book review citations from thousands of publications.

New York Review of Books: The online collection goes all the way back to volume 1, number 1, 1963.

The New York Times Book Review: Browse specific issues.

Biographical information

There is a library guide to biography with many more options. See also the English Literature Research Guide.

Ancestry: The Library Edition of Ancestry.com has historical documents dating back to the 1500s.

• You will need to install and configure the VPN on your computer, phone, or tablet before you can use it. Follow the instructions for setting up a VPN connection on different operating systems.

• Visit McGill Libraries' Genealogy research guide.

Dictionary of Canadian Biography/Dictionnaire biographique du Canada: Free resource from University of Toronto and Université Laval.

American National Biography Online: Over 19,000 biographies of significant, influential or notorious figures from American history.

World Biographical Information System (WBIS): Biographical information on over 6 Million people from the 8th century B.C.