Library - Online Catalog Tutorial

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General Information
 

This tutorial will assist you in using the Online Catalog for research. If you have questions about anything here or need further assistance, please contact the Library by Email, or call us at 01 40 62 05 61.  You can also ask questions in the library at 9, rue de Monttessuy (go directly to the Service Desk).

I. Opening a session

Your first step is to open a session by going to the library home page.  Click on the following link:

http://library.aup.fr/

This will open a new window on the computer.  

This new window will display the library home page.  Keep this window open to accomplish the tasks in this tutorial and then switch back and forth between the library home page window and this window.  If you look at the bottom of the screen you will see something like this:

The buttons directly above indicate different programs open.  Look at the two Microsoft Internet explorer symbols:

This means that there are two Internet Explorer sessions open, and you can click back and forth between them.

II. Searching the Catalog

Click on the link "Find a Book." The online catalog offers the following search options: Basic, Advanced, and Course Reserve.  You will see a screen that looks like this: 

Basic Searches

Let's look at Basic searches first.  Click on Basic Search and you will see this screen:

Basic Search          Advanced Search           Course Reserve              Search for:    Quick Limit:   None Last 10 Years French English Sound Recording     As:    Title Journal Title Author Subject Keyword (Boolean) Keyword (Relevance) Call Number     10 records per page 20 records per page 25 records per page 50 records per page

The Basic search option allows you to search by the title, journal title, author, subject, keyword (Boolean or relevance-ranked), call number or classification code of an item. There are several boxes that you need to look at before you can search.  The first box is preceded by "Search for:"  This is where you enter your search terms. You can enter just one word or more than one.  To the right, there is a pull-down menu box preceded by "As."  This is where you will select the type of search you wish to perform.  Additional options are menus for Quick Limits (narrowing your search by time period, language or format), Records per Page (how many results you wish to display on each page), and Limits (more precise criteria).  

Here is the step-by-step procedure: 

To perform a basic search:

• Enter your search terms in the 'Search for' box. 
• Select the type of search (title, author, subject, etc.) by using the pull-down menu.
• (Optional) Narrow your search by selecting limits from the Quick Limit menu or by clicking the Limits icon for more choices. (Reminder: Limits stay in effect until cleared).
• (Optional) Specify the number of results you wish to display by clicking in the Records per Page menu.
• Click the Search button to begin your search.  Click the Reset button to clear the search page.
• See below for helpful tips on constructing the various types of basic searches.

Here are some tips for basic searching:

Title, Journal Title

• Type in as much of the title as you know; the system automatically truncates on the right.

• Omit initial articles (e.g., a, an, the, le, la, les, los, der) and punctuation.

• (Optional) Focus your search by using the Limits icon. 

• If you are unsure of the word order, or recall only one or two words in a title, try using the Advanced Search option.  That option will allow you to search for keywords in titles.

Here is a sample results screen following a basic title search:

Author

• For personal names, type last name, first name: e.g., hemingway, ernest.  Commas are optional.

• For corporate names, type in as much as you know, omitting articles (e.g., a, an, the, le, la, les, los, der): e.g., national academy of sciences.

• Truncation: enter as much of the name heading as you know; the system automatically truncates on the right.  

• Limits cannot be applied to author searches.

Here is a sample search screen showing how we selected  'author' in the pull-down menu box to the right:

Subject

• The AUP catalog searches an official list of subject headings.  

• Type in as much of the subject heading as you know, the system automatically truncates on the right.  

• If you cannot identify a valid heading, use Advanced Search to find key terms in subject headings or consult the printed guide to the Library of Congress Subject Headings in the Library Research Room.

• Limits cannot be applied to subject heading searches.

Here is a sample search screen for a basic search using "women in literature" as the subject heading; notice that we have selected 'subject' as the search type:

Here are some results from the subject search above:

As you can see above, the Library has 152 items listed under the subject heading we entered.  You might want to look at additional entries and subheadings such as Women in Literature and Art.

Keyword (Boolean)

Now let's try a Keyword Search.  Click Basic, and choose Keyword (Boolean).  Boolean keyword searching allows you to enter more than one term and to obtain only those records containing both terms.  Enter two search terms related to your topic and connect them together with the operator AND (in upper-case letters) to look like this:

Here are results for the Boolean search combining the keywords fashion and identity:

Tips for Boolean Keyword Searching

• Combine search terms using Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT). 

AND will find items containing both terms.

OR will find items containing either term. 

NOT will find items containing the first term but not the second. 

• Quotation marks are used to indicate terms that should be searched as a phrase: e.g., "world wide web."

• Use parentheses to group search terms: e.g., (women or female) and history. 

• (Optional) Focus your search by using the Limits icon.

• Truncation: use ? to truncate search terms or find variant endings: e.g., comput? to find computers, computing, computer, and so on.

You may also wish to try the relevance-ranked keyword option, which places the record with the most occurrences of your keyword at the top of the list of results.  This is more useful for single keyword searches, or for phrases. Here is how to proceed for relevance-ranked keyword searches:

Keyword (Relevance)

• Choose search type (keyword - relevance)

• Type in keywords or phrases.

• Quotation marks are used to indicate terms that should be searched as a phrase: e.g., "world wide web."

• Use + to mark essential terms: e.g., +explorer.

• Use * to mark important terms: e.g.,  *internet. 

• (Optional) Focus your search by using the Limits icon. 

• Truncation: use ? to truncate search terms or find variant endings: e.g., comput? to find computers, computing, computer, and so on.

Your basic relevance-ranked keyword search box should look like this:

Below you will see a partial results screen following a relevance-ranked keyword search using the term 'internet.'  You will notice the ranking box showing bright red marks to the left.  Five red marks indicate a highly-relevant result, the numbers of marks and the colors change as relevancy rank lowers.  Relevancy is determined by how frequently a search term or keyword appears in a record - and also where it appears in a record (certain areas of a library record may be ranked more highly than others, e.g., title, subject heading).  

As you can see above, the first book in the list of 57 results does not even have the keyword internet in the title, yet it is ranked as highly relevant to your search.  Upon checking this item's bibliographic record, you might notice that the keyword appears twice in the main subject headings for this book.  Therefore, it achieves a high ranking for this search.

Warning: you should always check to make sure that the book you select really is relevant to your topic search.  Keyword searching is not as exact as searching by subject heading, and you may often find irrelevant results mixed in with the those that seem right for your topic area.  When looking at a book, it is helpful to skim the chapter headings and the index if there is one.

Call Number 

• Enter as much of the call number or classification code (letters and numbers) as you know. 

• Include punctuation. 

• Examples: 754.0973 J65a or PC-4 Doyle.

• Limits cannot be applied to call number searches.

Here is a sample call number search:

Advanced Searches

Now for some fun!  You may have used the advanced functions of various Internet search engines.  Let's try it in the Library's online catalog.  Click on the button marked "Advanced Search." You will see a screen that looks like this:

There are several boxes that you need to look at before you can search.  The first are preceded by "Search for:". This is where you can enter your concepts and keywords. You can enter just one word or more than one.  To the right, there are two pull-down menus. The first one lets you search all of the words, any of the words, or "as a phrase."   In most cases, if you enter more than one word you want to search for all of the words.  The buttons below each search box allow you to combine search terms with the next search terms below by indicating AND, OR, or NOT.  Again, in most cases you want to combine terms with AND.   The box on the far right ("As a:") lets you search by Keyword, Subject, Author, etc.  In most cases you will want to start off with a Keyword search since this will be the most flexible search you can do.  

Now type in your keywords in the space provided; in the following example the keyword is "market."  After clicking on "Search" you should see results as in the example below:

Note that this keyword search for "market" found 273 items, although only the first three are displayed here. You don't want to take the time to see if all 273 are relevant to your topic, so consider adding another word to "market" to narrow down the list of results. Let's assume that you want to find information, not just on all markets, but especially retail markets.  In that case you should combine the word "market" with the word "retail" (in other words market AND retail) since you want to find sources with both words in the record.

Go back to the Advanced Search screen by clicking on New Search at the top of the screen. Enter "market" as a keyword as you did before. Make sure that the lower left button says "AND" so that "market" will be combined with the next term you will enter. Then, in the next "Search for:" box, enter the term "retail." Look at the example below:

After clicking on search you will see something like the following:

From 273 items, we now have 3. This is much more specific and more likely to be relevant to the topic or topics you are researching.  If you click on any one of these, you can find out more information about the item.

III. Using Subject Headings

Now that you've successfully found three items using an advanced keyword search, let's take a look at another way to find Library sources. This will be done by using the catalog's official subject terms.  A keyword search looks for items using terms that you provide, whereas a subject search will look for items that have been classified according to topic by librarians.  Starting from where we've left off, take a look at the three items you found using keyword searching. Click on the second one. You will see the following:

This screen, the holdings screen, tells you where the item is located and whether or not it is available. To see the subject headings, click on the button marked "Bibliographic." You should then see this:

Look at the information under "Subject(s)." There are two subject headings for this book, "Markets" and "Retail Trade." Since we were looking for information on retail markets, click on the subject heading "Retail trade":

This lists several related subject headings, but let's stick with the broadest category, which is "Retail trade." If you click on this heading you will see the following:

Four items are retrieved, and only one of them was found previously with the keyword search. You can now see each item's location and availability.

This tutorial demonstrates several ways of finding material in our library.  It's important to use more than one method because, as in our examples, you will find different results with each kind of search.  You can use these same techniques in searching online indexes, which are the subject of another tutorial.