Use the Library Catalog

Select Overview, Author, Title, Subject, Keyword, or Advanced for help information.

Overview

e-Library@Iowa State University provides access to the ISU Library Catalog its electronic resources. These electronic resources include e-journals and e-books, index and abstract databases, reference tools, and a wide variety of Internet resources.

The Library Catalog contains records for the ISU Library’s books, serials (e.g. journals, magazines, newspapers, and directories), video, music CDs, microforms, maps, government documents, and archival materials.

Basic searching involves the following steps:

• Select an index to search, use the pulldown menu to specify what type of search you want to do (i.e., general keyword, title, author, subject, etc.). The default index is general keyword. Unless you select a different index, your search will be by general keyword.
  
  If you wish to search by title, you have several indexes from which to choose. The two most frequently used title indexes are "Title" and "Serial Title." The "Title" index includes the titles of all types of material--books, journals, maps, music, etc. The "Serial Title" index includes only the titles of journals, newspapers and magazines. There are four unique title indexes (series, video, music, and software) that may be useful if you are looking for these types of specialized materials.
• Enter your search term(s) in the blank box.
• Click on the "Go" button (or hit Enter).

The system ignores upper or lower case, and most punctuation. Occasionally, a punctuation mark is treated as a blank space.

who's who in congress = whos who in congress
u.s. = u s

Display of Search Results

Author, Title, and Subject searches display results closest to the term(s) searched, allowing you to browse an alphabetical list. The number at right indicates how many catalog records are associated with each entry:

		Jackson, David ............................	3
		Jackson, David, 1935-..................	2
		Jackson, David, 1940-.................	1
		Jackson, David A., 1934-..............	2
		Jackson, David Archer, 1942-........	1

Clicking on an entry produces either the corresponding record for results with one item or a list of "brief" records for results with more than one item. The brief record includes only author, title, and publication date.

Keyword searches take you directly to a list of "brief" records. To view the full record, click on the title to display the full catalog record.

The full record includes author, title, publisher, publication date, physical description, notes, subject headings, and--most importantly--the item’s location and call number.

For multi-volume serials and sets, an additional screen provides a "status" report, indicating whether each volume is available, checked out, missing, at the bindery, etc. This particular screen display is known as a "holdings" screen, because it tells in detail what the library "holds" (or has), and whether it is available. This screen is the default display whenever you view the full record for a single-volume item.

Within the full record, each field of information is labeled, e.g. "Title", "Contents", "Subjects", etc. When a label is hyperlinked (e.g., highlighted and underlined), you can click on the label to view additional information.

Another type of hyperlinked label found in the full record, is the link to the full-text version of books and journals. By clicking on the label "URL", you will load the fulltext version of the journal or book. Not all catalog records will have this link available.

NOTE: The maximum number of records displayed is 2,000. If you retrieve 2,000 records, you should narrow your search.

Select Overview, Author, Title, Subject, Keyword, or Advanced for help information.
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Searching by Author

Choose the AUTHOR search when you know the name of an author. Authors may be persons (including co-authors, editors, compilers, translators, composers, performers), organizations, or meetings (conferences, symposia, etc.).

Enter a personal author's name in inverted order (surname first), including a space between the last and first names. You may type as much or as little of the name as you wish:

dickinson emily
twain m

Enter an organization, meeting name, or person with no last name in direct order:

iowa state university library
conference on academic freedom
dr science

Search variant forms of a name when unsure, or when your search does not produce the expected results:

		Spellings		clark or clarke
		Prefixes		de la cruz or cruz
		Abbreviations		ieee or institute of electrical ...
		Spacing		us or u s
		Hyphenation		co-operative or cooperative

NOTE: If you are unsure of the correct entry of an author's name (e.g. "Van der Linden, Frank" vs. "Linden, Frank van der"), or know only some words in the name, you may wish to use the KEYWORD index, specifying AUTHOR KEYWORD.

To search for an author beginning with an article, place the article within quotation marks. This is equally true for Title and Subject searches:

"el" paso
"a" to z encyclopedia

Select Overview, Author, Title, Subject, Keyword, or Advanced for help information.
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Searching by Title

Choose the TITLE search when you know the first few words of a title. The title index includes, among others, exact titles, variant titles, and journal titles.

Use the SERIAL TITLE search when you want to limit your search to journals, newspapers, magazines, periodicals, and newsletters.

You may shorten or truncate a title, but you must enter the first word or two correctly:

twenty thousand leagues under
journal of the amer

Omit initial articles in all languages (A, An, The; Die, Der, Das; Le, La, Les; etc.):

		color purple				for			the color purple
		kapital				for			das kapital

Search variant forms of a word when unsure, or when your search does not produce the expected results:

		Spellings			organization or organisation
		Abbreviations			aba or american bar association
		Spacing			cpa or c p a
		Hyphenation			on-line or online
		Numerals			20th or twentieth or xxth
		Symbols			& or and

NOTE: If you are unsure of the exact beginning of a title, know only a word or two from the title, of if you are looking for items with certain terms in the title, you may wish to use the KEYWORD index, specifying TITLE KEYWORD.

To search for a title beginning with an article, place the article within quotation marks. This is equally true for Author and Subject searches:

"el" paso
"a" to z encyclopedia

Select Overview, Author, Title, Subject, Keyword, or Advanced for help information.
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Searching by Subject

Select a SUBJECT search when you want to find items about a topic. Names of people, places, organizations, and meetings may be searched as well as topics.

lasers
carver george washington
washington d c
iowa state board of regents
world food conference

Search a subdivided heading by including two hyphens (--).

united states--history--civil war

The last term may be truncated:

cardiovas
pioneer hi bred corn co

Search variant forms of a word when unsure, or when your search does not produce the expected results:

		Abbreviations			us or united states
					st louis or saint louis
		Spacing			folk lore or folklore

The thesaurus listing all authorized subject terms that can be assigned to books and other materials at ISU Library is "Library of Congress Subject Headings," commonly known as LCSH. (Non-LC subject headings from "Medical Subject Headings" and "Children’s Literature Subject Headings," are indexed but do not display in a full bibliographic record).

If the subject term you enter is not in LCSH, you will see an alphabetical list of subject headings closest to the subject word(s) you entered. If you get no matches, consider changing a subject search to a keyword search, then look at the full display of any titles that look useful, in order to find out what the most appropriate subject headings are.

NOTE: If your subject search returns results that are not relevant, you may wish to use the KEYWORD index, specifying SUBJECT KEYWORD.

To search for a subject beginning with an article, place the article within quotation marks. This is equally true for Author and Title searches:

"el" paso
"a" to z encyclopedia

Select Overview, Author, Title, Subject, Keyword, or Advanced for help information.
Return to top.

Searching by Keyword

Keyword searching is one of the Library Catalog’s most powerful features. Use this search to find items not easily located by author, title, or subject searching.

A keyword can be a single word or phrase, or numbers, such as publication dates or ISBNs. Keywords can be taken from an author’s name, a title, a subject heading, a publisher’s name, etc.

Keyword searching enables you to search for an item when:

• the author is unknown or you are unsure of the entry element or spelling of name
• the order of or spelling of words in a title is unknown
• the Library of Congress (LC) subject heading is unknown or does not retrieve enough entries
• combination of search terms using Boolean logic is needed.

The GENERAL KEYWORD search, which is the default, looks for a word or phrase almost anywhere in a catalog record (author, title, subject, genre, series, notes, etc.).

The AUTHOR, TITLE, and SUBJECT keyword searches, available from the pulldown menu, allow you to limit a search to these specific fields.

Truncation

Use an asterisk (*) to explicitly truncate a keyword, or to serve as a "wild card" character in the middle of a keyword. This applies to all types of keywords (i.e., general, author, title, subject).

		william*			retrieves William, Williams, Williamson...
		pe*ersen			retrieves Pedersen, Petersen...
		simulat*			retrieves simulate, simulates, simulated...
		encyclop*dia			retrieves encyclopedia, encyclopaedia
		colo*r			retrieves color, colour

Boolean Operators

Operators are connecting words that specify the logical relationship between two or more keywords. Search terms may be combined with operators, enabling you to broaden or narrow your search.

AND is used to narrow a search. This operator will find records in which two or more terms are both present. (NOTE: AND is the default operator. If you don’t type any operator between two words, the system will assume you mean AND.)

pollution and health
welfare reform

OR is used to broaden a search. This operator will find records containing either or both terms specified. This is also useful when you need to search synonyms or variant forms of words.

racism or sexism
snow or sleet

NOT is used to restrict a search. This operator will find records containing the first term but not the second term.

disarmament not nuclear
management not waste

Hints for keyword searching:

• Spell terms(s) correctly and in full.
• Distinguish between alphabetic "l" and numeric "1."
• Avoid broad, single terms that take a long time to retrieve records and result in too many hits.
• Change the Boolean operator, or add terms if results are unsatisfactory.
• Omit small, common words such as "of" and "on." Stopwords are not searched.

Some words and abbreviations appear so frequently in records that the keywords search system does not search for them. These stopwords are: an, and*, at, by, das, der, for, in, la, le, les, not*, of, on, or*, the, to.

*AND, NOT, and Or may be used only as operators.

Select Overview, Author, Title, Subject, Keyword, or Advanced for help information.
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Advanced Searching

The Advanced Search form provides enhanced keyword searching capabilities. A major feature of this form is the ability to search multiple keyword fields and to limit searches by location, collection, or language.

Combined Keyword Search

You can combine up to two different types of keyword searches. The types of keyword searches are the same as those found on the basic search screen: GENERAL KEYWORD, AUTHOR, TITLE, and SUBJECT. You enter your first search term into the Search Term box and then choose which type of keyword search. Then you choose from the dropdown box which type of Boolean operator you wish to use. Then you repeat the process of entering the search term and type of search. You start the search by clicking on the go button.

NOTE: For both Basic and Advanced searches, the maximum number of records displayed is 2,000. If you retrieve 2,000 records, you should narrow your search. When searching by keyword, you can narrow your search by limiting or by including additional terms.

Limit By

In addition to combining type of keyword searches, you can limit the search to specific library locations/collections, languages, or formats. After entering your search terms but before clicking in the go button, choose your limiting features from the menu options.

Location/Collection option allows you to limit your search to one of the listed locations. Location refers to any building or unit in the ISU library system that maintains and/or circulates its own collections. Each of the branch facilities (the Veterinary Medical Library, and the reading rooms for Design, Economics/Sociology, Mathematics, and Physical Sciences) is identified as a location in the catalog. The Parks Library is also a location, as is Reserve and Media Services, each of which has its own circulation policy. Collection refers to a body of material shelved or stored in a particular place, and circulating (or not circulating) under the same general policy. Examples of some of the collections in the library catalog are PARKS Reference, PARKS Map Room, DESIGN New Book Shelf, and PHYS/SCI Course Reserve.

Language limiting option allows you to limit your search to library materials written in or translated from one of the ten of the most popular languages.

Format limiting option allows you to limit your search to library materials found in different formats such as printed maps; videos, DVDs, films, slides, etc., software, data files, and several other formats.

NOTE: When limiting a search, only one limit feature is allowed. For example, a search can be limited to one language or one location, but not both.

Display of Search Results

See the description of display of search results in the overview section. The records in the library catalog display identically regardless of how the catalog is searched.

Need help?

For more searching tips choose "help" on any screen in the Library Catalog or ask for assistance at any of the service desk of the ISU Library.

NOTE: While the Basic Search form is expected to remain relatively static (for ease of use), the Advanced Search form will have new features added as the underlying software is enhanced.

Select Overview, Author, Title, Subject, Keyword, or Advanced for help information.
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Last modified: Thursday, 03-Jun-2004 07:53:41 CDT
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