Using the Library Catalog

ollege.edu/library/?section=tutorials/ library_catalog_tutorial

This video tutorial will demonstrate how to use the library catalog.

To access the Library Catalog, click the Books link at the top of the library’s website. This will take you to the library catalog’s basic search screen.

The catalog has four different ways to search. For information on a topic, choose Anywhere. If you know the title or author of an item, choose Title or Author. If you know the Library of Congress subject heading for your topic, choose Subject Heading. Most searches will use one of these four search methods.

Let’s search for a topic. Since we don’t know the Library of Congress subject heading, we are going to use an anywhere search. Our topic is global warming, so type these keywords into the search box and click Search.

This search produced 509 results. Icons in each record will show if it is a book, such as result #6, an e-book, such as result #7 or another format such as streaming video.

Let’s look at result number 1, A Climate of Crisis: America in the Age of Environmentalism. We can see a lot of information about this item from the results screen at the bottom of the record.

Santa Fe/Northwest Campus Circulating indicates that this book is in our library on the Northwest Campus and is part of the Circulating collection—meaning that it can check out of the library. Available indicates that this book is available for check out of the library and should be on the shelves. If the book was already checked out, a date due would show here.

To find this book on the shelf, we need its call number. The call number for this book is GE 197 .A45 2014. The call number includes everything from the first letter to the date. To see where this call number is located in the library, click the Map It button.

The map will pop up in another window and here we can see that this book is located on the 3rd floor. The red highlighted area indicates where to find this call number on the third floor. All of the books on the third floor can be checked out.

To discover even more about this book, click the title to view the complete record.

The full record contains information about the author, title, and publication information. Some records contain a table of contents and an abstract, or summary, of the item.

Scroll down to the bottom of the record to view the Library of Congress subject headings. These are the more precise terms to search. In this case, some of the subject headings are climatic changes and environmental policy. To get better search results, search those terms as a Subject Heading.

Also, use the Cite This button in the top right corner to generate a list of citations for this book, including citation styles for APA, MLA and Chicago. Be sure to always carefully review generated citations, as they may not be 100% correct.

The library catalog offers many ways to refine your search. On the left-hand side of the results page, use the options under Format to limit your search to a specific format such as online resources, media and streaming video. If we click on streaming video, we find 123 results that match our search for global warming. These and other online resources do require that you login with your Borrower ID and PIN. The Borrower ID is your SF ID number and the PIN is the last four digits of your SF ID number.

This concludes the video tutorial on using the library catalog. If you still have questions, please contact a librarian.

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