You do not need to read an entire book cover to cover in order to use it as a source in your research assignment.
Look at the table of contents to see if there is a chapter that addresses your narrower aspect of a broader topic covered in a book. For example: Is there a chapter about Ohio's response to the opioid epidemic in a book about the broader national response?
Or you can use the book's index to see which specific pages a book contain information about your topic and read only those pages. (For example: Perhaps a book about the opioid epidemic includes information about Ohio drug courts on pages 72-75).
The search box on the library's home page allows users to search for articles, books, videos, and more with a single search. To search for books only, select Books from the first drop down menu, then enter your keywords in the text box. Before clicking Go, you have the option to specify where you want to search for books in the second drop down menu:
On the results list, you can also choose Available online to see a list of e-books that you can read immediately.
Click on a title to see:
Books contain a lot of text and other information, but our catalogs search the words in titles, table of contents (sometimes), and subject headings. Keep this in mind when searching for books and consider searching for broader terms rather than very precise topics.