China in Africa : Penn Libraries resources: Finding books

It's pretty easy to find books on China in Africa in Franklin Catalog, the Penn Libraries catalog, but it's even easier if you know how to construct a search.

• Know your Library of Congress subject headings!
  The relevant subject headings have a dyadic structure:

  China--Foreign relations--Zambia	Zambia--Foreign relations--China
  China--Foreign economic relations--Zambia	Zambia--Foreign economic relations--China
  China--Commerce--Africa	Africa--Commerce--China
  Investments, Chinese--South Africa
  Economic assistance, Chinese--Tanzania

• Use Franklin Catalog's "keyword expert" search.
  Take advantage of those dyadic subject headings:

  subject:(china OR chinese) AND subject:(relations OR commerce OR investments OR assistance) AND subject:(africa OR zambia OR tanzania OR ethiopia)

  Substitute country names or add them as synonyms for Africa.
• What if my book is charged out?
  If it's late in the semester, you'll find many China in Africa books will be charged out. Turn to E-ZBorrow and BorrowDirect for these - copy the Franklin Catalog book's title or ISBN and paste into the E-ZBorrow or BorrowDirect search box. Both services typically take three or four days to deliver, if our lending partners have their copies on shelf.

As the Penn Libraries' electronic collections grow, keeping track of our fulltext holdings - especially single items within a database - can be very difficult. Many of these ebooks will be found through Franklin Catalog, too, but here are some good recent books that survey China in Africa. Their parent databases will have other useful readings, too.