Catalog Tutorial: Simple Keyword Search

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Tutorial Direct (full size) Link: http://www.screencast.com/t/bJptUc7Z

4:39 minutes - file format: swf (requires Adobe Flash Player to play)



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Transcript:

Hello, in this video, I am going to demo how to search the catalog.


[Keyword Search]
First, let’s do a simple keyword search using the search box. I am going to search for a book about “positivity”. Just type in the word and click "Go". I have 330 results. That’s just too many to browse through. I’ll add a keyword “psychology” to narrow the search to items that contain both words and maybe talk about positivity in the field of psychology. There are 20 results. The order of the words does not matter as each word is searched on its own, then combined with a hidden Boolean “and”. I can type in “psychology positivity” and still get the same number of results. It is generally a good idea to start with one or two keywords. Too many words will find very few or no matches.

[Browse result list]
The result list shows me the title, author, and availability. Right now, the list is sorted by publication and copyright date so that the newest books appear at the top. Since I am not too concerned by publication date, I’ll resort by relevance.
I can see that No. 2 is “available for reference”, which means that I can only use it inside of the library and make photocopies or take notes when needed. The call number in the square brackets shows that this book is on the “Reserve Reference” shelf for Psychology 280. That shelf is behind the new book shelf.

[ebook access]
No. 3 and 4 are ebooks, I’ll click on the link next to “availability” to open No.4 . This book is in our ebrary collection. I can read the entire book on my computer. I know that when I am off campus, I will need to use the library database username and password to open the ebook. The password is posted in Angel and it is not the same as the Catalog “My Account” login.
I’ll go back to the result list.

[Detailed Record: what the book is about.]
No. 1 looks really good. It is published in 2009 and available for loan. I’ll click on the title to view more information. Here I can see what the book is about by looking at the subjects and the table of contents. I can also click on “Google Preview” to read the first few pages in “Google Books”. Click on the link Preview this book » Not all books have previews.

[Detailed Record: where it is.]
Click on the browser “back” button to go back to the book record. The holdings table shows that there are 3 copies of this book and all of them are available now on the New Book Shelves for a 2-week loan. I could write down the location and the call number and go to the shelves if I have time.

[Add to Cart]
Since I want to do that later, I’ll click on “Add to your Cart” in the upper right corner.
Click on the browser “back” button to go back to the result list. I’ll “Add to Cart” no. 2 as well. Now I’ll click on “Cart” to send the list to my email or print it.

This concludes the basic searching demo. Thank you for watching this video and using the Catalog.

y.y.