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Use the HSU library catalog to find things owned by our library such
as books, CDs, DVDs, and video tapes. Do not use the catalog to look
for journals, magazines, newspapers, or articles. Instead, use one or
more of the library’s databases when you’re looking for articles and
use the journals tab when you are looking for the title of a journal,
magazine or newspaper. The catalogs tab under Quick Search on the
library’s homepage is usually a good place to start a search in the
HSU library catalog, whether you are looking for a known item or for
material on a given subject, starting with keywords is often best.
Then you can examine your results and perhaps improve your search. If
you are searching for an item for which you know the author and title,
use the author’s last name and a few words from the title as keywords.
In this example, the book is “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra
Cisneros. The quote marks are optional. They keep these words together
as a phrase. Use them only in keyword searching. The first item listed
is the English version. The second is the Spanish translation. Click
the title link for more information about the book, including its call
number, a link to a map showing where it is in the library, and a link
to text the call number to your cell phone. If you want to see a list
of all the books our library has by Sandra Cisneros, you can either
click on her name to see the author record or click the search tab and
do an author search. Note that the author’s last name goes first. You
don’t need to capitalize.
Click her name heading to see a list of the items by her we own. Note that the fifth item
is a video recording of an interview with her. She is listed as one
of the authors because she made a significant intellectual contribution
to the film. Here is an example of searching for material
by subject. If you were looking for books on holistic medical therapies,
start with a keyword search such as “wholistic medic?” The
question mark is a truncation symbol used in keyword searching only. It
tells the catalog to run a search for all the possible endings to a word.
In this case, “medic?” will search for medic, medical, medicinal,
medicine, medicines, etc. In many of our other databases, the symbol
for it is an asterisk. We found four items and all look useful. Note
that the first one is a VHS videotape. The subject headings in this
record will help you find more results. Subject headings are standard
terms for a given subjects. They help get around the ambiguities
of natural language, variant spellings, and the fact that there
are so many synonyms and ways to say the same thing in English. Notice
the spelling of holistic medicine in the subject heading. Click the
subject heading to see that our library has 63 items listed under this
spelling. The subject heading list also shows the subdivision that
indicate what we have on more specific aspects of holistic medicine.
Here we see the 63 items we have on holistic medicine displayed with
the most recent ones first. Click any title of interest for details
about it, including how many pages long it is, if it’s illustrated,
and if it has a bibliography. Alternative medicine is another
subject heading that may lead to items of interest. Use the search
history button, rather than your browser’s back button, to return to
earlier search results. You may want to explore more subject headings,
such as Herbs--Theraputic Use or Spiritual healing.
This has been an introduction to the HSU library catalog. For help
with more advanced features of our catalog, or for help with other
library catalogs, please contact a reference librarian.
In this tutorial you have learned: The different reasons to search the HSU library
catalog, the library's databases, and the Journal Finder,
How to search the Hsu Library catalog for a known item,
How to use subject headings when searching for material on a given subject,
And how to navigate search results and find where items are located in the library building