Electronic Resources Awareness - Byte Size Sessions - Research Skills No

Workshops in Information Skills and Electronic Resources

A Gateway to Library Riches: Searching online catalogues

SHORT DESCRIPTION (30 words)

Libraries are the source of a tremendous range of books, manuscripts,

journals, maps, etc. Online public access catalogues (OPACs) describe

all these items and tell you which libraries hold what.

LONG DESCRIPTION (54 words)

Online Public Access Catalogues (OPACs) provide a description and

listing of the items held by libraries. This course will briefly

explain how a catalogue is compiled, go through the OPACs that are

available for Oxford University, and then cover some other catalogues

that provide access to other academic libraries, national libraries, and

international libraries.

Welcome to this lunchtime session entitled:

A gateway to Library riches: searching online catalogues

Introductions:

Jayne Plant, Reader Services Librarian (IT) based in the Bodleian

Kate Petherbridge

Teaching notes

§ Aim

To provide an introduction to Online Public Access Catalogues (OPACs) for Oxford University and other major collections.

Aims of this session:

· Learn what OLIS is

· Learn how to search OLIS effectively:

§ Objectives

§ To provide an introduction to OLIS (OU OPAC)

§ To provide an overview of COPAC

§ To show how to link into other OPACs for major collections

What we will look at:

· Title search

· How to move around the screens i.e. forwards, backwards and starting a New search

· Searching for definite and indefinite articles

· Author search

· Boolean searching

· Boolean combined author and title searches

· Other combined keyword searches

· Exploring the differences between subject searching and subject keyword searching

We'll then move on to look at More complicated searches

Using truncation

Modifying a search - just show this one - 10.1.03

Sorting your results

Opac Parms

Downloading records

Marc records

So let's look at the first of our aims: What is OLIS ?

Does anyone know ?

OLIS

OLIS is the University's online catalogue and now combines the pre and post 1920 catlaogues via the single interface. Remember it is possible to do combined searches.

It now covers the holdings of 93 libraries throughout the integrated library system.

OLIS is a union catalogue and a complete list of OLIS member libraries and information about them, such as opening hours, can be found at http://www.lib.ox.ac.uk/libraries

Telnet version (character based)

For a printout Press Alt P

It is not possible to save a list of records and then print them out at the end.

However you can click on edit and paste it onto notepad, or if on your own pc you can paste details directly into a wordprocessing package. In the library you will have to use notepad since the machines are not set up to take word.

Geoweb version – Excellent courses are run at OUCS. You can mark records for printing but as yet only prints of full citations show the libraries’ holding details too.

Searching by title ?

With over 7 million books in the Library the best way to search is by title:

So how do we do this.

We first need to find a computer and then via the OxLIP screen we enter either Telnet version or the GeoWeb version. This morning we are going to concentrate entirely on the Telnet version.

DEMONSTRATE OLIS

So select 1 and press return to search the catalogue and ignore PAT.

To search the catalogue, highlight an option by using the arrow keys

We are going to find a book called

Marxism and the French Left (1986)

There are 2 lines with this title because the book has been reprinted, we are going to select line 2 because I happen to know there are more copies here.

Next screen gives brief information about the book and shows where it is available. In this case there is one copy in the Bookstack and one copy in the Upper Camera.

EMPHASISE LOCATION – if you don’t know what all the coding stand for there is a list available from the web address in your pack.

Searching for books beginning with definite or indefinite articles.

NOT all books are kept on the open shelves, those used most frequently are kept at the staff desk. These look different on OLIS.

So to begin again press N for NEW SEARCH and return

This time we want a book called

A short history of the Liberal Party, 1900 - 2001

OMIT DEFINITE AND INDEFINITE ARTICLES

lots with similar title , so select the line number from down the left which matches the dates we want.

Line 6 and press return - THE NEAREST MATCH USUALLY APPEARS BELOW THE ARROWS

Interpreting OLIS - How do I know if I need to order a book

Many books on reading lists will be in the reading room, but as there are 6 million books in the Bodleian some are kept below the library, again they look differently on OLIS

N for new search

t= Sport in society : issues and controversies (1998)

Just type in sport in society then tell them which subtitle we want

Select most recent edition

EMPHASISE LOCATION BOD Bookstack

line 3 is located at Nuneham - remember when you see this it would take longer for the books to arrive.

Author searching

This is a way to search but we need to be aware that we may need to look through several different lines to discover all the books and locations of books for a particular author.

So if I put in Dickens, I get the following:

OR I could type in Dickens, C which would take me to the correct part of the index, note here that not only are there several entries for Charles Dickens , the author we want i.e. with the dates 1812 - 1870 but also others with the same name and if we look at them writing different books.

This lengthy list may be sorted, the default sort is by author, with those with no definite , or a corporate author coming to the top of the list. Choose S to sort by date.

Boolean Logic -

What is Boolean logic ? – we use this if we want to combine a search

Boolean logic is a system of formulating logical statements symbolically.

It was developed by the nineteenth century English mathematician, George Frederick Boole.

It uses the terms “and”, “or”, “not” when formulating search commands.

When to use Boolean Logic ?

Boolean Logic should be used when formulating searches on any topic to find relevant books,

journal articles etc.

How do I use Boolean Logic ?

Choose the keywords for your search and combine those keywords by applying the Boolean

operators.

What are the 3 main Boolean operators ?

These are “AND”, “OR”, “ NOT”.

These very simple commands allow the original search strategy to be easily adapted.

AND – this operator narrows a search. What you are effectively asking the computer for is information which contains all the elements you are looking for e.g. if you were to type marlowe and shakespeare the computer would show you all the articles it contained with references to both these authors.

OR – this operator expands a search, so if you were to type in Shakespeare or Marlowe then the computer will show you all the articles it has containing either one or both of these authors.

NOT – this operator excludes a term. If for example you type Shakespeare not Marlowe the computer will find all articles it has on Shakespeare which contain no references to Marlowe.

Equally if you type Marlowe not Shakespeare the computer would give you all the articles it has

on Marlowe excluding any which mention Shakespeare.

Combined author and title searches

So I do a search for a book called Internal colonialism and see the following list but I can't remember if it had a sub-title so I would have to look through each one to find the one I want which I know is by Hechter

So instead I could combine my searches and you should ideally enter the search term which is likely to retrieve the least results first and then run the search for the larger search term against it.

So Hechter is a fairly unusual surname so we do this first, then we combine it with colonialism - the Boolean and is actually assumed by the system if you don't enter it but for now we'll leave it in.

OR do aw= Dickens and tw=Oliver and sort

Subject searching and subject keyword searching

s=global warming and this takes us into Library of Congress Subject Headings

some have no number against them because the library holds nothing on that particular subject.

Subject searching offers us a list of alternative terms to look for which can be useful but it can narrow a search too much, so if you want to ensure wider coverage you should use subject keyword searching.

This retrieves lots of entries.

Bear in mind that keyword searches may time out if it is likely there will be lots of books on the topic chosen.

sw=global warming - this retrieves 308

Note the difference if we do a title keyword search

tw=global warming

we retrieve 137 because we are saying to the computer that both these words must appear in the title.

• Truncation/word stemming

– Symbol varies but often * or ?

• Wom* will find women, woman, womankind, womanhood, womenfolk etc. etc.

• Wildcard symbols

– Good for variant spellings

• Colo*r

Sorting your results

OPAC Parms

This is where you can choose to limit your search to a particular library

Let's take a simple keyword search;

tw=mice

and we get 507 titles containing the word Mice

We now highlight OPAC parms at the bottom of the screen

Now select the option Change options

which takes you to the first line of the display and as with all changes in OLIS, if we do not know what we want we can browse a list by typing ??

We then see a list of all the possible library locations and can as usual move backwards and forwards through the list - let's choose 75 for Merton

Resume search is now highlighted so we simply press return to do just that and we see our list is considerably reduced to just 2 titles and if we look at these in turn we will see they are both held in Merton College Library.

Choosing OPAC parms again and then the option Reset parameters will change the qualification back to none and we then get the complete list of titles across all libraries restored.

COPAC

COPAC is a union catalogue and provides FREE access to the merged online catalogues of 22 of the largest university research libraries in the UK and Ireland PLUS the British Library. and these are lsited in your pack:

Aberdeen University

Birmingham University

Cambridge University

Durham University

Edinburgh University

Glasgow University

Imperial College

Leeds University

Liverpool University

University of London Library

London School of Economics

Manchester University

Newcastle University

Nottingham University

Oxford University

School of Advanced Study

Sheffield University

Southampton University

Trinity College Dublin

University College Library

Warwick University

Wellcome Library