O N-LINE P UBLIC A CCESS C ATALOG

O N-LINE P UBLIC A CCESS C ATALOG

OPAC

O N-LINE P UBLIC A CCESS C ATALOG OPAC Finding what you need in your school or public library. PART I: The Basics SUBJECT SEARCH

Do you have anything about… …the little ice age? …minimalism in art? …tsunamis? …President Bush? …Native Americans? …NIN?

SUBJECT SEARCH Every book ever written is

SUBJECT SEARCH Every book ever written has

SUBJECT SEARCH Every book ever cataloged Has been assigned at least one And

Are intended to answer the question that begins with: “Do you have anything about…?”

All you have to do is to Figure out what subject best describes what you want, then type it in the search field and click on search. It sounds easy enough. But remember, when we did a subject search on horse…

…we turned up 135 items!

That’s nice! But do you have time to look through 135 items? Let’s try this :

Click on “BROWSE”

Now, you have a list of related subtopics to choose from:

Suppose that what you really want to do is to draw pictures of horses,

…from this list, HORSES IN ART might be a good place to look.

Highlight HORSES IN ART…

…click the “Return item” button…

…and you will get this result:

The list of 135 items has suddenly been narrowed to two items that exactly meet your needs.

Sometimes, when you do a search you will get this result.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that we don’t have what you need. So Don’t give up yet! Maybe the problem is with your search term

In this case, we have a spelling error.

Most often, “data entry” errors are the problem. But other problems include: * Choice of terms * Choice of databases (Click to advance slide.)

O N-LINE P UBLIC A CCESS C ATALOG END OF PART I : The Basics Subject Search (Touch Esc to exit the program.)