ACT Library Catalogue Search Tips and Help

About the library catalogue - an introduction
Search screen – doing a search
Search results list – displaying records after a search
Item record – finding more information about a title you've found
Help – suggestions for selected search problems

1. What can I find?

The ACT Library catalogue is a database that you can use to search our library collection. Our collection includes:

• Books and reports
• Videos
• Audiocassettes
• CD-ROMs
• DVDs
• Web resources (including websites, online databases, etc.)
• Journal articles from the journals we subscribe to (most articles published after 2001)

Our catalogue contains records that describe the items in our collection. The catalogue does not contain the items themselves. If you want to read (or watch or listen to) an item, you need to be at ACT to pull the item off the library shelf. For some items, the record may contain a link to another website where the item will be available online.

For more information on the subjects the library collects and how to borrow material, see the About the ACT Library guide on the ACT website.

2. How do I find it?

A library catalogue search can be divided into three steps:

1. Searching the catalogue database using the search screen.
2. Viewing the items found by your search in the search results list.
3. Finding more information about an individual item by looking at the item record.

The “Where am I?” information beneath the ACT logo at the top of each page will tell you what step you are on.

1. The basics
2. Entering search terms into the search boxes
3. Using more than one search term
4. Options button
5. Subject search box - subdivisions
6. Search for new titles

Enter words that describe the type of resource you are looking for in one or more of the search boxes. These words are your search terms. Click the "Start search" button to begin your search. The search will look through all the records in the catalogue and find any record that also contains the terms you entered. Click the “Clear search boxes” button to clear terms from the search boxes when you want to start a new search.

If the search does not find any matches, a "no records" message will appear. This may mean the resources you're looking for are not available in our collection. But, it may also mean that you need to modify your search terms, the way you combined your terms, or the search boxes you used, to get better results. You can see the Help section below for specific tips on how to improve your search.

2. Entering search terms into the search boxes

There are 5 different search boxes on the search screen. You can search using more than one box. Each box searches the catalogue a little differently. The Keywords box is the broadest, most general search box because it searches all the information in each record. The other search boxes (Title, Author, Subject, Format) only search certain parts of each record which make it easier to narrow in on a specific item (eg. there may be 500 records with the word organization somewhere in the record, but only 20 records with organization in the title - using the Keywords box will find 500 records, using the Title box will find 20).

You can use the chart below to help you decide which box to use. For additional help using the Subject search box, see the Using the thesaurus guide on the ACT Library webpages.

Remember that the way you combine multiple search terms also affects your search (see Using more than one search term below).

Search Box	What search terms you can use	Use this box when:
Keywords	Any word	You don’t know the title or author, or you can’t find a word describing your subject in the Subject "Options" list.
Title	Any word	You know the title or words from the title.
Author	Any word Enter personal names in this order: last name, first name (eg. Husbands, Winston)	You know the author’s name or part of the author’s name (the author may be an organization name).
Subject	Words from a subject list created by the library. Click on the "Options" button next to the search box to choose words from the list.	You want to find resources on a particular subject.
Format	Words from the format list. Click on the arrow to the right of the search box to choose a format from the list.	You only want to find resources in one format. If you don't choose anything, the “All” option will be used to search for all the formats in the list.

If you are using more than one search term, you need to tell the search how to combine these terms otherwise they will be treated as one phrase (eg. if you type party drugs Toronto, the search will look for the phrase party drugs Toronto, not the separate phrase party drugs and the word Toronto).

If the search terms are in different search boxes (eg. one is in the Keywords box and one is in the Author box) combine the terms using the choices to the left of each search box. Click on the arrow to view the three choices. They are AND, OR, and NOT (see box below for an explanation of these terms). AND, OR and NOT are called Boolean operators.

If the search terms are in the same search box, add a &, / , or ! symbol between terms to connect them (see box below for an explanation of these symbols).

You can also use other special search symbols to search in different ways. The search will always recognize the search symbols as they are explained below. If you want to search with a phrase that uses a symbol, just leave a space where the symbol usually appears (eg. to search for true/false, just leave out the / symbol and type true false).

Remember that your choice of search box(es) also affects your search (see Entering search terms into the search boxes above).

Type this…	To find records…
safer sex	That contain the phrase safer sex (the words must appear in that order).
=safer sex	That contain the exact phrase safer sex. If there are words before or after the phrase safer sex, the record will be ignored (eg. a record with the phrase safer sex for gay men will be ignored because the search will only be looking for the phrase safer sex appearing by itself).
safer & sex	That contain both the words safer and sex, in any order. Records with just one of these words will be ignored. “&” represents AND
safer / sex	With either the word safer or the word sex, in any order. “/” represents OR
safer ! sex	With the word safer, but not the word sex, in any order. Records with both of these words, or with just the word sex, will be ignored. “!” represents NOT
safe*	With the word safe, safety, safer, etc. (that is, any word beginning with safe).

The Title, Author, and Subject search boxes each have an “Options” button next to them. You can use the Options button to help you choose search terms. The Options buttons may not appear if your web browser does not have Java script enabled.

To use the Options list:

1. Click on an Options button to get a list of all the terms that exist and can be found by a search box (eg. the Options list for the Authors box contains all the authors that can be found in the catalogue).
2. The Options list is in alphabetical order. You can search the list by scrolling down. You can also type a word into the “Find” box and click the “Go to” button to move to the section of the list where your word appears. Using the Find box is faster because the Options lists are long and may scroll slowly.
3. If you find a term you want to search with, highlight it and click the “Paste” button to transfer it to the search box.

If you are pasting more than one term, these terms will automatically be connected using the / (OR) connector (see Using more than one search term above for an explanation of the OR connector). You can manually change the connector in the search box if you would rather use & (AND) or ! (NOT).

If you look at the Options list for the Subject search box, you will notice that some terms appear on their own (eg. Aboriginals), and some terms are followed by a dash (-) and an additional word or phrase (eg. Aboriginals - Canada). The additional words or phrases are called subdivisions. Subdivisions allow subjects to be broken down into more specific groupings.

Please note that in the ACT Library catalogue, subdivisions are not used to describe the subject of journal articles. If you search with a subject that has a subdivision, the search will find everything that the library has on that subject, except the journal articles. If you want to find journal articles on that topic, use the term without the subdivision (eg. for Aboriginals - Knowledge, attitudes, beliefs [Term - Subdivision], search with the term Aboriginals by itself).

Subdivisions describing places (an area, country, province, or city) are used as regular terms for journal articles. If the term you wanted to use had a place subdivision, you can remove the - (dash) and add & (AND) between the term and the subdivision to search for journal articles which focus on that subject and place (eg. Aboriginals & Canada). If you pasted the term from the Options list, you also need to remove the = (equal sign) and the " " (quotation marks). For a list of our geographical subdivisions, see the HIV/AIDS Thesaurus on the ACT website.

1. The basics

The search results list shows you all the titles that were found during your search. If the list doesn't include what you're looking for, you may want to modify your search and try again. You can see the Help section below for specific tips on how to improve your search.

2. Reading the search results list

The search results list tells you some basic information about the titles you've found. This basic information includes what you need to know to find the item on the library shelf:

For books, videos, audiocassettes, CD-ROMs, and DVDs you need to know the call number (eg. CIR 020 HIV CAT 2003, 01024, PCC-V015, A0291, DVD0003).

For journal articles you need to know the journal title, issue, and page number(s).

If you want more information about an item, click on the title to get the full item record. For web resources, you will need to go to the item record for the website link.

3. Navigating the search results list

Navigation buttons on the search results list page include:

Click this button...	...to get here
Next records	The next page in your search results list if there is more than one page. Includes count of how many records are on the next page.
Previous records	The previous page in your search results list if there is more than one page. Includes count of how many records are on the previous page.
New search	The search screen
Previous Page	The last page you were looking at
Previous Search Stage	The search screen. This button is only active if you are more than one screen away from the search screen.

4. Using the check boxes – narrowing your search results list

If you want to narrow the number of results listed on the search results page you are viewing:

1. Select the titles you want to keep in the list by clicking on the square box to the left of the title. A check mark will appear to show the record has been selected.
2. Click on the “Clear check marks” button at the bottom of the page if you want to remove the check marks (this will clear all the check marks on the page).
3. After you've selected all the records you want to keep in the list, click the “View selected records” button at the bottom of the page.

Now you have a page of search results that contains only the titles you are interested in. You can print out this page and use the information on it to find the items on the library shelves.

The check mark selections only work for the page you are on. The check marks do not carry over to the next or previous page in the search results list.

1. The basics

The item record gives you more detailed information on an individual title. You can use the information to help you determine if the resource will be useful to you or not. Some special features of the item record include:

1. Online access

   If the item is available online with free access, a link to the online version will appear in the record. Please be aware that these links will take you to websites outside of the ACT website. The ACT Library is not responsible for the content of these websites, nor are we necessarily endorsing the websites included in our catalogue. If the link leads to a page that no longer exists, please let the library know.

   If there is no Online Access link, this means the ACT Library does not know of a website that provides free online access to this title. If you know that an item is available online for free, please let the library know so we can add the link to the catalogue.

2. Subjects

   If you click on one of the subject terms in the item record, a search will automatically be performed to find other records that contain the same subject term. Doing a search with a subject that describes a useful item is a good way of trying to find other related items.

2. Navigating the item record

Navigation buttons on the item record page include:

Click this button...	...to get here
Next record	The item record for the next title in your search results list
Previous record	The item record for the previous title in your search results list
New search	The search screen
Previous Page	The last page you were looking at
Previous Search Stage	Your search results list. This button is only active if you are more than one screen away from your search results list.

The terms in the Options list come from the Library's subject list, the HIV/AIDS Thesaurus. Because the vocabulary of a field is always changing as new terms are introduced or old terms are no longer used, a thesaurus can become out of date as ideas change.

If you are searching for a subject that has recently become important in the HIV/AIDS field, there may not be a term in our thesaurus to describe it yet. You can try putting your term in the Keywords search box to see if the term shows up somewhere else in the record besides in the Subject (eg. in the Title or Abstract). You can also try and find a thesaurus term that is closely related to your topic which would be the next best fit. The library will describe an item using thesaurus terms that most closely relate to its topic if a more specific subject match cannot be found in the thesaurus.

If you need help finding subject terms, you can look at the full HIV/AIDS Thesaurus on the ACT website. You can also see the Using the thesaurus guide online.

If you are using the Keywords search box to search by subject, keep in mind that one subject can be described by many different words. If you are looking for information on older adults, for example, words that describe the subject older adults include seniors, senior citizens, elderly, aged, etc. If you can't find anything with the term you are using, you may need to think of other similar words (synonyms) to search with to cover as many possibilities as you can. To do a thorough Keywords search, you may also want to search with as many synonyms as you can even if you found resources with the first term you tried.

You should also keep in mind that words can have multiple endings. Doing a search with the term girl will not find records with the word girls in it. Use the star (*) search symbol to include multiple word endings in your search (eg. girl* will find all words that start with girl including girl, girls, girlfriend, etc.).

Using the Subject search box helps to eliminate the need for coming up with all possible variations on a term. In the Subject box, each subject is described by one chosen word. If you enter the term older adults in the Subject box, for example, you will find all the items that focus on older adults. This is because older adults is the term the library has chosen to represent the concept of seniors, senior citizens, elderly, aged, etc. Try using the Subject search box if you are not having much success with the Keywords search box.

• If you used the Keywords search box, try doing a more specific search using the Title, Author, or Subject search boxes instead. This will limit the search to only certain parts of each record (that is, title, author or subject) as opposed to searching the whole record which is what the Keywords box does.

• Try making your search more precise by using more search terms (eg. women & testing, instead of just women). Remember to connect terms using &, /, or ! if you are entering them in the same search box. See Using more than one search term for explanations of these symbols.

• If you are only interested in resources in a specific format (eg. journal articles) choose the format from the Format list. If you do not choose a format, the search will automatically look for all 7 formats.

• If a / (OR) symbol appears in your search term (eg. HIV/AIDS) remove the / symbol and leave a space where it was. The / connecting symbol will search for records that contain either the first word, or the second (eg. HIV OR AIDS), not the phrase HIV/AIDS. See Using more than one search term for more information on the / symbol.

• If you know the title of an item, try using the equal sign (=) search symbol to find an exact phrase match in the Title search box. Entering =Nutrition in the Title search box will find titles that contain the isolated word "nutrition", and skip records that contain "nutrition" as part of a larger phrase like Nutrition and HIV.

• If you used the star (*) search symbol for multiple word endings, try doing a search for a full word instead to narrow down the range of words being found (eg. search for statistics instead of stat*). You can also try making your word stem longer (eg. search for statistic* instead of stat* to avoid finding words that may not have to do with statistics like statutory).

• If you are doing a specific search in the Author, Title, or Subject search boxes, try doing a general search in the Keywords box. This will search all the parts of each record for your term, not just certain sections.

• Check to make sure there aren’t any leftover search terms from a previous search in any of the search boxes. These older terms will interfere with your current search strategy by adding extra, unwanted search instructions.

• If you used more than one search term, try using fewer search terms. There may, for example, not be a record that includes all 5 of the terms you were looking for, but there may be some records that contain 3 of them.

• Did you spell one of your terms incorrectly? Try using the star (*) search symbol to stand for the half of the word you aren’t sure about (eg. microb* for "microbicides").

• If you are entering more than one search term into the same search box, remember to connect those terms using &, /, or !. See Using more than one search term for explanations of these symbols. If you don't use these symbols, the search will try and find your terms as one long phrase.

• If you are entering more than one search term into different search boxes, check the drop down boxes on the left to see what term is connecting your search boxes. The default is AND which means all terms must be in a record in order for the search to find it. Change the term to OR if you want any, but not necessarily all, of the terms to be found in a record.

• If you are searching using the Subject search box, please note that subdivisions are not used with journal articles. If you search with a subject that has a subdivision, (eg. Aboriginals - Conferences), the search will find everything that the library has on that subject except the journal articles. For more information on subdivisions and searching for journal articles, see Subject search box - subdivisions.

The library catalogue does not have a search box for dates. You can enter the date you are looking for in the Keywords search box. This will find every record with the chosen date in it, though this does not limit the search to publication date.

The search results list also sorts the items that are found in reverse chronological order (recent items first, oldest items last). If you are interested in a certain year, you can do a search, then scroll through the search results list to the section where the publication year you are interested in is found.