Library and Internet Skills

Next: How to Search by Title | Previous: How to Access the Catalogue |

Getting Around in the Library Catalogue

The University of Toronto Libraries' Catalogue is a web based catalogue and uses familiar objects like

Drop down menus: A drop down menu allows you to choose between several possible options. To see all of the possible options in a drop down menu, click on the downward pointing triangle on the right side of the box. Drop down menus are used extensively in the library catalogue.
Radio buttons: a sample radio button. Radio buttons are used to indicate that you must choose between several possible options. Their most common use in the catalogue is to choose between the "keyword," "browse," and "exact" search modes.
Text input boxes: . Text input boxes are used to enter search criteria and limits in the library catalogue.

Moving backwards and forwards

Most users of the Internet are familiar with the "back" and "forward" buttons found in the top left corner of most browsers. These buttons should be ignored in favour of the blue navigation bar that appears on every screen.

Go Back: The Go Back button will bring you back to the previous screen. You should use the Go Back button instead of the browsers "back" button. Using the browser's "back" button may cause errors in your search results.
Help: The Help button will open up the help screens for the catalogue.
New Search: Clicking on "New Search" will bring you back to the basic search screen.
Next/Previous: The Next and Previous buttons appear when you are working with hitlists and records. In a hitlist display the Next button will bring you to the next screen of 20 results while the Previous button will take you back one screen of 20 results. In a record display the Next button will bring you to the next record. You can also use the numbers at the top and bottom of the hitlist display to jump to specific pages.

Hitlists

A hitlist is the list of titles, subjects or authors that you retrieve when you do a search. To choose an item from a hitlist, press the number to the far left of the item you want.

For example, if you want the details about 'Spiny oyster shells', press 3. For further information about hitlists, skip to "The Hitlist".

Records

Each item in the libraries' collection has a catalogue record. The catalogue record, in addition to listing the author, title, publication information and subject headings will also give you the call number of the item and the name of the library/collection where the item can be found.

Entering Text

Tips

The Library Catalogue ignores capitalization.

The Library Catalogue ignores punctuation, except hyphens.

When keyword searching the catalogue will ignore a, an, as, at, be, but, by, do, for, if, in, it, of, on, the, and to, unless the words are enclosed in quotation marks.

Use brackets to group together search terms when using Boolean operators or field codes

To search for a phrase enclose the phrase in single quotes: 'never say never again'

Next: How to Search by Title | Previous: How to Access The Catalogue | Table of Contents |