Tabs
Answer
Tabs
Various options on the Find Tool let you narrow your search and specify how you want the results to be displayed. You can limit your search to specific formats, display only a count of the records found, or display the results in a list. The tabs allow you to be more specific in your search by allowing you to set limits by branch and collection.
The Settings Tab
From the Settings Tab, you can create a record set of the items retrieved in your search, reset the retrieval limit of your results set, and adjust the length of time before the search times out.
The Scoping Tab
After entering an initial search (here it was an author search for Novik, Naomi), click on the scoping tab to enter additional search terms. Some qualifiers that may be useful include: Title, Material Type (to limit to large print only, for example), Publication Date, and Series. As many qualifiers as desired may be added. Hit the Add button after selecting each Qualifier and Value, and before you hit Search.
Search results can be sorted by any of the available headings in a search result. For example, you can click on the heading to sort alphabetically (A-Z) or numerically (1-9) and click again to sort Z-A or 9-1. Similarly, sort by publication date by clicking that header, and so on.
Searching in TRACpac
TRACpac is probably the most important interlibrary loan tool in your library. It should be in constant use by you and your patrons. A few minutes spent familiarizing your new patrons with TRACpac will ensure that they use TRACpac to its maximum potential.
Go to www.tracpac.ab.ca
Keyword searching
- Type a word or words in the Keyword search for box. A keyword search looks for matches to your word or words (in any order).
You can use the wildcard character * to represent other characters. For example, if you type shake*, you might find "Shakespeare" and "shaker."
- Select a field in the Search by box. To search all the fields in the catalog records, select Any Field. To search a single field such as Author or Title, select the specific field.
- To focus your search to a specific format, select an option in the Limit by box.
- Click Go. The search results show all the titles that matched your search. Click any title to see more information.
To further refine your search results, click on More Search Options. Select the options you would like to limit by, then click on Set Search Options. To clear settings, click on Reset.
Browse Searching
You can browse a catalog index until you find items of interest. For example, you can type just the first few letters of an author's last name and then browse the Author index. When you browse the Subject index, you may find cross-references that can lead you to related subjects. You can browse the Title, Author, Subject, or Series indexes of the catalogue.
- Select the Browse submenu under the Search tab.
- Select an index in the Search for box.
Type your search word or part of the word in the that begins with box.
Click Go. The search results list shows headings in the index. You can browse back and forth in the index. Click a heading to see the titles associated with it.
Advanced Searching
Performing an advanced search allows the user to increase the number of search terms as well as limit their results by format, library location, publication year, material type, target audience (adult, juvenile, etc.), and language using the free-text fields and drop-down menus.
To search for multiple fields, utilize the Boolean operators in between fields.
- AND will retrieve records that match both the term before and the term after the operator in the results.
- OR will retrieve records that match either the term before or the term after the operator in the results.
- NOT will retrieve records that match the term before the operator but not after the operator in the results.