There are several ways you can obtain books or articles that we do not own. These include:
WorldCat Discovery. WorldCat Discovery allows current BU faculty, staff, and students to borrow books directly from other Boston Library Consortium libraries. Turnaround time is approximately three working days. (How to use WorldCat Discovery)
Interlibrary Loan. Interlibrary Loan services allow current BU faculty, staff, and students to request books, articles, book chapters, and other materials that our ILL staff will obtain from other libraries. Books generally take 2-4 weeks to arrive; articles are generally delivered electronically within 1-2 days.
ILL online request forms for all patrons except those affiliated with the Schools of Law and Medicine
Law Library's interlibrary loan page for Law School affiliates
Alumni Medical Library’s ILL form for Medical School affilliates
For general inquires to the Interlibrary Loan office, please call (617) 353-3706 or email ILLMML@bu.edu.
Search BU Libraries Catalog for more books
The best way for finding books about the environmental history of Africa is to search the BU Library Search interface. Try a ‘Subject’ search using the following Subject terms/headings:
Ex.: Environment* Africa history; “Human ecology” Africa history.
To find books on specific sub-topics such as desertification, land use, diseases, drought and famine etc., look for associated terms or events around the sub-topic and try using them as keywords / subject terms in combination with ‘Africa’ or the specific region, country or locality you want to research.
Ex.: “soil degradation” AND Sahel; ecotourism AND Masai
To find books on specific countries replace 'Africa' with the name of specific country or region you are interested in and combine your search with the keyword or subject heading used as search term.
Begin with a keyword search and try various combinations. How you search can determine the number of results:
Example: Kenya
Using AND narrows the search: Kenya AND Conservation
Using OR broadens the search: Kenya OR East Africa AND conservation
The BU Library Search also has many facets that can be used to refine your search in various ways.
Example, try searching only in the author field: Author search for Wangari Maathai
You can further limit your results in various ways, for example choosing only articles or selecting specific years.
The results provide a breakdown of books and articles on that topic and other similar subject headings you might want to investigate.