Online Catalogue (OPAC)

Catalogue

as on 31/07/2009

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Use the Find option and search by

Call No., Author,Title and Subject

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How to Search

the OPAC (Online Public Access Catalogue)

in the Library ?

Two computers are in the library for searching the documents online.

Users can search the OPAC at any time in the library.

INFORMATION RETRIEVAL

Simple Search

Document Selection box

Document Select Box is used to select the document for which you are going to retrieve the information. Default selection is the Book. You can select any other by just clicking on the button, a pull down menu will appear and you can select from it. You can select Book, Member, Issue, Reservation, Journal, Indexing, and Multimedia. On selecting the document the fields in the “Field Name” will change to the fields of the document you selected.

Field Name Selection Box

You must select a field name here. The default field name will be ‘All’, means selected all the fields. All the fields we enter in the Book Accession are listed here. Using the scroll button we can scroll to the appropriate field and select that field which we are using to search. The fields for searching are listed when you select the document. Fields to each document will be listed in the Field Name when we select that document. Field name will change according to the document we select. If any field of a particular document is not listed you can type it there.

Operator Selection Box

You must select a Operator here. There are 7 operators listed here. The default operator is ‘Like’. Other operators are“ = “ : Is Equal to“<>” : Is Not Equal to“ > “ : Is Greater than“ >= “ : Is Greater than or Equal to“ < “ : Is Less than“ <= “ : Is Less than or Equal to Like operator are used to display similar words or like things which are given for searching.

Look For Text Box

What you are searching must be added here. You can replace space,character or a group of characters with the asterisk (*) symbol here. You can use more than one Asterisk (*) symbol in one search item.For Eg: Searching for “Modern English Literature” Book can be entered like this “ Mod*eng*lit* “will display the text if it is present.Searching for Malayalam Text “ Nalukettu” can be entered like “*al*ke*tu “ will display the book.NB: You can use this facility if you don’t know the spelling correctly of the author, title or any field of a book.For displaying total book in the computer select ‘Book’ in the document, ‘All’ in the Field Name, ‘Like’ in the Operator and Asterisks (*) in the Look For will display the total books that had entered in Libsoft.

Ordering

The displayed search result can be sorted in Ascending order or Descending order in respect to any field you select in the select box. Clicking the check button before Asc/Desc will get it sorted ascending otherwise descending. The fields available for sorting the results are Acc_No, Call_No, ISBN, Author,Title, Subject, Series, Imprint, Year, Supplier, Bill_No, Date_Release.

Boolean Search

The Boolean Search does searching based on more than one condition. Just clicking on the Boolean command button can make changing from Simple search to Boolean search. The window will change as shown below and Boolean command button will turn to Simple command button.

Logical Operator

Logical operator select box is used to select a logical operator. Three logical operators are given AND, OR, AND NOT AND Operator: If AND operator is used only those results are displayed when the two conditions are true (Simple and Boolean)OR Operator: If OR operator is used if any of the condition becomes true the results get displayed.AND NOT Operator: If this operator is used the first condition must be true and the second condition must be false satisfying this condition the result get displayed.

Operator

This is same as the Simple Search Operator. Select appropriate operator from the list.The default will be “Like”.

Look For

This is same as that of the Simple Search. You can follow the same rule as that of the Simple Search. You can use asterisks (*) here also.This command button is used to start the searching. Giving the conditions and clicking on the button ‘SEARCH’ the system starts searching for the records according to the condition given in Look for. After entering the conditions in ‘Simple’ and ‘Boolean’ or Simple search just click on the search button or press the enter key, this will activate the search.

NB: You cannot execute a Boolean search with giving conditions only in the Simple search Look For

This button is used to view the details of the book as shown below. All details of the book will appear in the window with the ‘OK’ and ‘CANCEL’ button.Clicking on the ‘OK’ will move to the next record and its details will be displayed. Cancel willcancel the window. Seeing the details of a particular record select that record and click on detailedview.Displayed record number will be displayed at the top of the window. All fields will be displayed like this.Fields with null values will not be displayed.

Circulation Details

Circulation Details of the book are displayed here. Details include Member Number, Name, Issued On, Due Date and Reservation Status of the Book issued. If we are searching with‘Book’ in the document it is displayed. For book that is not issued, Circulation Details will be Book Status and Reservation Status.