Catalyst is the shared online catalog of the libraries of Carleton College and St. Olaf College. It provides an access point to the books, periodicals, government documents, and electronic resources available at Carleton or St. Olaf.

Library of Congress Subject Headings are the words and phrases you can use to do a subject search in Catalyst (as opposed to a keyword search, where you may use any words you like).

When starting out, it is often helpful to do a keyword search on your topic, and then to examine the subject headings of the results you find relevant. Catalyst displays these subject headings as links and clicking on one of them will automatically conduct a subject search for that particular topic. 

Because works are classified so that similar items will be shelved together, browsing the shelves can be a useful way to figure out what the library in a given field of study.  Below are some call number ranges relevant to the study of Philosophy:

• B 1-99  Philosophy (general works)
• B 108-708  Ancient philosophy
• B 720-765  Medieval philosophy
• B 770-785 Renaissance philosophy
• B790-5802 Modern philosophy
• BC Logic
• BD  Speculative philosophy (including metaphysics, epistemology, methodology, ontology, cosmology)
• BJ Ethics