A GUIDE
TO THE
NEW LIBRARY CATALOGUE (WebCat)

The IoA Library catalogue is now available on the Internet as a World Wide Web Catalogue
(WebCat).
This Guide tells you how to access WebCat, and gives some hints and advice on searching for records.

I. Accessing the Catalogue
II. What the Catalogue Contains
III. Searching the Catalogue including General Hints for Searching
IV. Looking at Search Results
V. Refining Searches
VI. Printing/Downloading/Emailing Search Results
VII. Exiting the Catalogue

I. Accessing the Catalogue

You can access the catalogue via the link on the Library's home page
 or go straight to it at http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~ioalib/homepage.html

NB In WebCat you should always use the catalogue's own icon at the top of the screen rather than the browser's 'Back' button to backtrack through pages.

WebCat is not case sensitive, so you don't need to worry about capitals.


II. What the Catalogue Contains

WebCat contains records for the following IoA Library items: Records for other items (former RGO slides, CD-ROMs, photographs, etc.) will be added at a later stage.

Note also that books acquired prior to August 1996 have BRIEF RECORDS ONLY (entries for title, place and date of publication, authors/editors, and series (entered in the title field)), and for these records, authors' or editors' names have been entered with INITIALS ONLY. These records will be upgraded to full records when the Library is reclassified.

Books acquired from August 1996 onwards have full catalogue records, including IAU Thesaurus subject headings. Authors' or editors' names for these records have been entered under their full form.


III. Searching the Catalogue

The first screen you see when you enter the catalogue is the 'Quick Search' screen.
This is the first of three ways to search the library catalogue:
To select the different options, click on the tabs at the top right of the screen:




III.1 Quick Search

With this search method, you can type in any words you want to find, but note the following:

If you want to enter search terms from different fields (i.e. author, title, etc.), you need to combine them by entering and, not, or, xor between your search terms.

and
not
or
xor		 both terms must appear in the same record
records containing the second term should be rejected
at least one of the terms must appear in the record
records can contain either term but not both

e.g. to find J.A. Peacock's Cosmological physics, type in 'Peacock and cosmological',
rather than 'Peacock cosmological'.

Choosing how to search

The following options appear above the box where you enter your search terms, and tell the catalogue how to search:

Click on the button next to the option you want to select.

Keyword finds records containing the word(s) entered.
Browse allows you to view the indexes of author, title, subject, or series headings found in the library catalogue, taking you into the index at the word(s) you enter as your search term(s).
Exact finds records that exactly match the word(s) entered.

Choosing what to search

The following options appear below the box where you enter your search terms.
Click on the one you require to tell the catalogue what to search:



Search Everything searches all indexed fields in a record.
The other choices target the search to the specific fields named.


III.2 Complex Search

This search option allows you to define more precisely what you want to search for.

Fill out the search form entering your terms in the appropriate fields. The pull down menus to the right of the search boxes allow you to combine search terms in the boxes with and, not, or, xor (and is the default).

Underneath the search form are various 'Search Limits' which you can set to direct your search in a particular way. For example:

Pubyear: specify an exact year, a range of years (e.g. 1990-1995), greater than a given year (e.g. >1990), or less than a given year (e.g. <1998).

Itemtype: use this to limit your search to a specific itemtype, e.g. slides.

Match on: use this to specify whether you want to match your search term(s) according to:
keyword - searches for the word anywhere - this is the default option
partial - does an truncation search through the browse indexes
exact - the field must contain exactly the search string, nothing more, nothing less

Format: this refers to the format of the catalogue record, not the actual item - use 'Itemtype' to limit a search according to the item itself.

NB ANY SEARCH LIMITS YOU SET ARE STORED BY WebCat AND WILL
APPLY TO ALL SUBSEQUENT COMPLEX SEARCHES UNTIL YOU CLEAR
THEM BY CLICKING ON 'RESET QUERY VAUES'.


III.3 Call No. Browse

This search option lets you browse through items in the catalogue according to their call no. (also called classmark or shelfmark). e.g. entering 'A.1.1' in the search box and clicking on the 'Browse Shelves' button will give you a list of all books in the library with the classmark A.1.1.

'Shadow' in the 'Search Limits' options refers to the shadow catalogue which is used for cataloguing purposes by the Library staff and can be ignored here - accept the default setting of 'No'.


III.4 General Hints for Searching

Truncation
Use $ to truncate words
e.g. astrophysic$ will find astrophysics and astrophysical

Wildcards
Use ? to replace a character in a word
e.g. organi?ation will find organization and organisation

Positional Searching
You can specify where search terms should occur in relation to each other by entering the following commands between your search terms:

same
with
near
adj		 the two terms appear in the same paragraph
the two terms appear in the same sentence
the two terms are adjacent to each other but in any order
the two terms are adjacent to each other in the order used

e.g. if you want to search for the phrase 'galaxy formation', enter the search term 'galaxy adj
formation'. This will find only records with these words exactly in that order, whereas entering
the search term 'galaxy formation' would find records with both these words anywhere in the
record, e.g. it would also find the book Star formation and the interstellar medium in
galaxy simulations.

Authors

For records entered prior to August 1996, authors' names have been entered with INITIALS ONLY, but for records entered from this date, names have been entered under their full form. As the Library is reclassified, these earlier brief records will be upgraded, with all authors' names being entered under their full form.

In the meantime, this means that if you want to see what books we have by a particular author, the best method is to do a 'Browse' search on the author's SURNAME ONLY. Choose 'Quick Search', enter the surname in the search box, click in the button next to 'Browse' above the search box, then click on
underneath the search box to execute the search. This takes you into the index of authors, allowing you to browse through the names, and should alert you when there are records entered under both the full form of name and under surname and initials only. You can bring up the records for a particular author by clicking on that name.


IV. Looking at Search Results

WebCat displays your search results as a list of brief records. To move forwards or backwards through this list, click on the icons at the top of the screen:



You can also to a particular record in the list by clicking on this icon then typing in the record number (useful for skipping some records in particularly long lists).

To see the full records, click on the icon next to the brief record.

Like Searching
If a term in a record (e.g. a classmark, author, series title, or subject) is highlighted in blue and underlined, you can click on this to perform a 'like search', meaning WebCat looks to see if there are any other records which contain the highlighted term.

URLs
Clicking on URLs in catalogue records opens up a new WWW window and takes you to the Web page in question.


V. Refining Searches

You can refine any search by clicking on the button which appears along the top of the screen.
This brings up the 'Complex Search' menu with your current search term(s) entered, allowing you to refine a search by publication date, itemtype etc., or by adding to/amending your search term(s).

Alternatively, scroll down to the bottom of the list of results screen, where the 'Complex Search' menu is automatically displayed.


VI. Printing/Downloading/Emailing Search Results

You can mark records to save them for printing, downloading, or emailing by clicking in the little square checkboxes to the left of the records.

NB You have to print, download, or email the marked records before going on to do another search. WebCat doesn't remember marked records from old searches, only from the current one.

Click on the icon at the top of the screen to bring up the options for printing, saving, or emailing records, and select your preferences using the pull down menus.
e.g. you can use the 'sort by' menu to specify whether to sort the records by author or title.

Next, click on the appropriate button according to whether you wish to 'VIEW', 'SAVE', 'PRINT', 'EMAIL'.
NB choosing 'VIEW', 'SAVE', or 'PRINT' opens up another window with the selected results displayed - this can be ignored.

VIEWchoose this to display the records you selected on the screen.
SAVEchoose this to save the records you selected to a specified file. Click on the 'Save' button to bring up the selected search results (a second window will open up automatically - this can be ignored), then select 'Save as' from the Web browser's 'File' menu, and choose where you want to save the file and what you want to call it. Files can be saved as html or txt files.
PRINTchoose 'Print to attached/local printer' using 'File' menu's 'Print' to print out results on printer connected to your computer. Click on the 'Print' button to bring up the selected search results (a second window will open up automatically - this can be ignored), then click on the Web browser's 'Print' icon on the toolbar at the top of the screen, or select 'Print' from the 'File' menu.
EMAILenter the desired e-mail address in the box, then click on the 'Email' button to mail the selected search results. A message will appear on the screen to tell you "Search results were mailed".


VII. Exiting the Catalogue

When you have finished using WebCat, please close down your session by clicking on the 'Exit' icon at the top of the screen.


This guide is intended only as a basic introduction to searching the catalogue. For further information or advice on more complex searching, please ask the Library staff who are always happy to help.

Page maintained by the Institute of Astronomy Library
Last modified: 8th February 2001