Section 6 - Catalogue Searching
Objectives
This section will show you:
➢ how to perform title searches for items in the catalogue
➢ how to perform author searches in the catalogue
➢ how to perform a keyword search in the catalogue
The Library Catalogue provides details and the locations of:
➢ books,
➢ cd-roms,
➢ videos and dvd's
➢ journal titles
(Note the catalogue does not contain details of the articles within the journals. To find journal articles you need to search the databases.)
➢ maps
➢ newspapers
There are several ways to search the catalogue. The three main ways are Title, Author and Keyword searching. We will look at each individually.
Title search
A title search is useful when you already have the citation of an item or know the title of the item you want (a citation or reference, consists of the publication details of the book/video/cd-rom/journal; it includes the author, title, publisher, and the date of publication).
To do a title search:
Go to the CQU Library home page www.library.cqu.edu.au,
Click on SearchSMART under Finding Information
Click on the Library Catalogue link under Search the Library Catalogue
Select Title from the left hand column under Search by:
Do not include - The, an, or a when they are the first word of a title. For example, if you search for The successful marketing plan you will not find the book. If you search for successful marketing plan you will find the item.
When doing title searches you don’t need to include punctuation.
A list of titles will be retrieved for you. Click on the relevant title to retrieve its record. In this case, we are looking for:
Kotler, P, Adam, S, Brown, L & Armstrong, G, 2003, Principles of marketing, 3rd edn., Pearson Education, Frenchs Forest.
You can also use the Title and Author search to find a particular book. This search is particularly useful when looking for common titles or common surnames for authors, such as the surname adam and the title marketing.
Note there is more than one book with the correct title and one of the authors we are looking for. None of the records mention all three authors, however, [et al] means ‘and others’, so we will select that record.
You will be presented with a record for the item. In this case, there are three records available for this item. If you look at the records, you will notice that they are different editions of the same book.
To see where the 3rd edition is located, click on the Copies Held link. The availability page will tell you at which campus library the book is located and what the
call number is. Also check the availability of the item by checking for a due date
If you can’t find the title you are looking for, consider any variations in spelling, eg, if you can’t find “Organisational behaviour”, try searching for “Organizational Behavior”
Exercise 9
Perform a title search to find the following book:
Ali, S, Kidd, J & Hall, J, 2006, Marketing Insights, 3rd end., Pearson Education, Frenchs Forest.
.
What is the call number?
Is it available at the Sydney campus library?
Author search
To perform an Author search:
Go to the CQU Library home page www.library.cqu.edu.au,
Click on SearchSMART under Finding Information
Using the Search Library Catalogue box, type the author of the item into the author, title, call number search box, select author from the drop down and click on search. For the best search results, type in the author’s last name, space, first initial.
The example we will use is Adam, S
Click on the author you want from the list. In this case, the first name of the author we want is Stewart
You will be provided with the list of books by the author that the library holds. If there is more than one edition, each edition will have a separate record.
Beware of different variations of a person’s name, eg. Johnstone vs Johnson, Brooke vs Brook, Le Brun vs Lebrun.
It does not matter if you use capitals or not in title or author searches.
Exercise 10
Try an author search for Rosenberg, Larry J. He authored a book titled Marketing.
What is the call number of the 2nd edition of this book?
How many books by this author are held across all campuses of the CQU Library?
Keyword searching
Having identified your keywords in your search strategy, you can now conduct a keyword search in the catalogue.
To do a Keyword search:
go to the CQU Library home page www.library.cqu.edu.au,
Click on SearchSMART under Finding Information
Select Library Catalogue.
Under Search by: select Keyword
Type in the keywords you have identified (don’t forget to use Boolean, synonyms, truncation and phrase searching as explained in sections 3 and 4).
You will be presented with a series of records to choose from. If what you are looking for is not there, try other synonyms.
Exercise 11
Perform a keyword search in the library catalogue to find items relating to one your assignment topics. Write down your search strategy.
Need more help in searching the catalogue?
Look at the library’s online tutorial “Compass”
http://www.library.cqu.edu.au/finding/compass/section-four/find-books.htm