Our Web site offers a page of travel resources with links to important information for travelers on the Web. We also point to some of the riches of the library’s collection that you can find only by visiting us. Other resources in that page are from the premium virtual library we call “Reference Databases,” requiring your library card number for access:
- "Places and Parties around the World" is a collection of encyclopedia sets covering nations, cities, geographic features, cultures, and holidays.
- "Online guidebooks and articles” links to a database that includes Fodor's travel guides plus guides from other publishers. Find them under the “Books” tab when you've done a search for a place. Several of the items in that list will be chapters from the same book; click on the book’s title (on the second line) to bring up the entire contents of the book.
- The section under "Articles from National Geographic Traveler" reveals five full-text articles from a recent issue of the magazine in the database. You can click on a link to an article or go to the magazine for further searching.
Finding books
It’s not all that straightforward to search for guidebooks, so just consider it part of your travel adventure. Remember, you can always call the Reference Desk at 215-8700 for a personal guide, and we don’t even accept tips.
Using the Quick Search box, enter a place name followed by the words and guidebooks to find our travel guides that you can check out. Enter it as a subject search, and if you don’t find enough, then you can broaden your search by changing the target from Subject to words or phrase, and you can also try searching for a larger geographic area containing the place you want to study. For example, if you want more items when you search for Albuquerque and guidebooks, search for “New Mexico” and guidebooks—and remember to put quotation marks around the phrase "New Mexico" so that you don't end up with tons of items about something new in Mexico.
Don’t be thrown off by the publication year that shows on a guidebook that is published every year or so, because the catalog might show an older year in the brief display. For example, your subject search for Albuquerque and guidebooks lists Frommer's Santa Fe, Taos & Albuquerque with a date of 1999. When you look at the display of item details, the books we have are newer editions.
If you want to read about a place and you don’t want a travel guidebook, search for the place name with the words description travel as the subject, such as Barcelona description travel. For literary travel writing and literary tours, search for literary and travel as the subject.
In the “Armchair travel” box we have links to three catalog searches that can get you started browsing through some popular books on countries.
Finding videos
Do a search on the place name with the words and travel and video$, such as Paris and travel and video$. Look for the “Travel by video” box to find links to general searches for travel videos.
