Central MA Library Catalog

The Central MA Library Catalog is a network of public, academic, school, regional, and special libraries in Central and Western Massachusetts. Our members share an online computer system and have combined collections of more than 6 million items. This network is also known as C/W MARS (Central & Western Massachusetts Automated Resource Sharing).

The Woods Memorial Library is an online affiliate of C/W MARS and can obtain items using the Central Massachusetts Regional Library System (CMRLS) via courier. We do not circulate items through C/W MARS, and so, upon a successful search for books, our items always state "Check Shelves" because their system does not know if an item is checked out or not. To find out if one of our items is available for check out, please call us at 978-355-2533 to see if it is in. We can then pull it if you wish and hold it on our reserves shelf for you to pick up. If, upon a successful search for books, you get the response, "No entries found," that means we do not carry the item. If you are interested in getting an item from another library and wish to have it delivered to the Woods Memorial Library, please contact us to fill out an Inter-Library Loan form.

Help for Using the Catalog

Search by Title
Type as much as you know of the title, beginning with the first word. Use whole words and phrases.

Search by Author
Type the name of an author last name, first. Type the name of a corporation, organization, or performing group in direct order.

Search by Subject
Good to use if you're sure of the Library of Congress subject heading. If you're not sure or receive poor results, try a Keyword search.

Search by Keyword
Type words from titles, authors, subject headings, contents, etc. Combine words with and, or, and not. Use an asterisk (*) to truncate words.

Once you have your search results, click on the item with the blue line under it that seems the most promising. If you have a very long list of search results and wish to go through the pages of search results, you can also mark the records for later viewing. To do this, check the box next to the item, then click "save marked records." To get to the next page, click the top or bottom right blue button.

If you find no results for your item, click the C/W MARS Union Catalog button. This will expand your search to Western Massachusetts libraries in addition to Central Massachusetts libraries.

When you click on your item, you are presented with a lot of information. You have a description of the item, as well as a chart which tells you which library owns the item, it's call number at that library, and many times it will tell you if the item is on the shelf. Many small libraries (like the Woods Memorial Library) do not subscribe to full C/W MARS membership, so you will not know if the item is available for check out. C/W MARS will state "check shelves". If you do not see a chart under the description, then no libraries in C/W MARS own the item. It may be there as a mistake, or it may be a deleted item. If you would like to request an item via interlibrary loan, please fill out our form. Because we are not circulating members, we prefer to handle interlibrary loaned requests. If C/W MARS does not carry the item you are looking for, please call the library. We may be able to obtain it through CMRLS, which looks at libraries from around the country for the item. We've received items from almost every state, from college, school, and public libraries. Please be prepared to wait, however, as these Inter-Library Loan's take quite a while, usually.

Begin your search using the Central MA Library Catalog now.