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Basics Go to the top of the window

Navigation

You can navigate the Web OPAC by using the buttons on your Web browser as well as the navigation buttons on the Web OPAC screen.

A screen is made up of two frames. The top frame shows the menu bar. This frame appears on every screen and offers the key functions and user options for the system. The large lower frame displays various search options along with screens that display results.

Types of Searches

There are four different Search types available in Web OPAC: Basic; Multi-field; CCL; and Advanced Search. To choose a particular type of Search, click the relevant link from the Search screen. For more information, see the Search section.

Web Browser Requirements

You need a Web browser (Internet Explorer 5.x or higher; Netscape 6.2 or higher) configured to support Unicode-based characters. Windows users need Windows 95 or higher (Windows 2000 is recommended) with appropriate Global IMEs (input method editors) installed. Macintosh users need OS9.x with the appropriate language packs installed or OS X.

Browse Go to the top of the window

The Browse search allows you to search the catalog in alphabetical or numerical order, like a dictionary. Your search, if successful, will result in an alphabetical/numerical list. You can then browse forward or backwards through that particular list or index.

To search by browsing:

Choose the index you want to browse through, then enter the text from which you would like to start browsing. This text will appear at the top of a scrollable list. For example, entering the letter a will give you an alphabetical list starting at the letter a. Entering the word great will give you an alphabetical list starting with great.

Some of the indexes available are the Author Index, the Title Index, the Subject Index, the Exhibition catalogs Index, the Congress acts Index and any other index that your library has made available to you.

  • For authors, enter last name first, (e.g. berenson bernard).
  • For titles, leave out initial articles (e.g. La, Le, Un, Una, The, An, A etc. ).
  • For subjects, enter less rather than more; refine your search if necessary.
  • For exhibitions enter the city where held in English (e.g. Florence, Munich etc.).
  • For congress acts enter the city where held in English (e.g Florence, Paris etc.).
  • Enter as much as you are certain of; quit typing when in doubt.
  • Ignore capitalization if you wish; it should make no difference.
  • Punctuation:
    • Most punctuation marks may be entered or ignored.
    • If you get unexpected results, try the search again, adding or deleting the punctuation mark.
Search hints

The Author index includes:
  • Personal names: Berenson, Bernard
  • Corporate names: Gallerie degli Uffizi
  • Named conferences: Convegno Internazionale della Ceramica
The Title index includes titles of monographs, periodicals, series, offprints, and individually cataloged articles of selected journals.
Do NOT enter initial article.

The Subject** index includes:
  • Personal names: Bruno, Giordano
  • Corporate names: Museo nazionale del Bargello
  • Topical terms: Art, Italian
  • Geographic names: Florence (Italy)
  • Titles as subjects: Candelaio
The Exhibition Catalogs index includes:
  • References to art exhibition catalogs arranged topographically by city (in English), hosting institution, and date (year of the exhibition)
Examples:
Florence. Galleria degli Uffizi. 1975. Exhibition catalogs.
London. National Gallery. 1980. Exhibition catalogs.

The Congress Acts index includes:
  • References to congress acts publications arranged topographically by city (in English), and date (year congress held)
Examples:
Florence. 1991. Congresses.



Browse List Go to the top of the window

The Browse List displays the number of records for each entry and indicates whether or not there are cross-references for the entry. Click on an underlined entry to see the associated records for the entry.

Character Sets and Unicode Go to the top of the window

The catalog records are encoded in the Unicode character set. Unicode allows for the display of a large range of alphabets and diacritics (also known as accent marks) and special characters.

Displaying non-English Characters If you are seeing strange characters in some of the Web OPAC records, it may be because of your browser. There may be titles in the collection that are in non-Western European alphabets. To view these records correctly, you need to use a Web browser, which is set up to display these languages. In general, your browser should support Unicode (UTF-8 character set) display, and must have a suitable font available.

In older browsers, some characters in non-Western European languages will show up as groups of four letters and numbers. For instance, in Netscape 4.x, records with Chinese characters will display strings such as \65B0\653F.

To set the browser character encoding:

  • Internet Explorer:

    From the View menu, select Encoding, then click on Auto-Select.

  • Netscape:

    From the View menu, select Character coding, then Auto-detect, then All [for Netscape 6.x] or Universal [for Netscape 7.x].
The Arial Unicode MS font provides the most complete support for Unicode characters. It is available with the following Microsoft products: Publisher 2000, Office 2000 Professional, Office

If Arial Unicode MS is not available to you, other fonts can be used with the Web OPAC. For information on other fonts that support Unicode, see the Useful resources link at www.unicode.org.

Full View of Record Go to the top of the window

In the Full view of a record, you can see the record in a variety of formats that change the tags from standard ALEPH tags to name tags or alphanumeric tags. You can also select the card catalog style.

The Full view has links that allow you to jump to:

  • A Browse List (services)

  • Other, similar records (services), for example, other records that share the same subject

  • Holdings information

  • External files, such as an electronic journal
Holdings Go to the top of the window

To view Holdings information for a given library:

In the results list screen, click on the underlined library name in the Items column.

or

In the Full View of Record screen, click on the library name link.

The Holdings window, containing a list of items held by the library, appears.

Previous Searches Go to the top of the window

You can view the results of previous searches, incorporate them into new searches, or combine them into one result set.

  • To see a list of the searches you have made during your current session, click on Previous Searches from the menu bar.

  • To review a search, select it, and click View.

  • To erase a search, select it and click Delete.

  • To combine two or more searches, select them, and click Cross.
Cross lets you work in various ways with a pair of result sets. For example, if you searched for Chicago, and now want do a similar search for Illinois, you can combine them by choosing a predefined logical operation: and, or, First set not second, Second set not first..

To cross sets with the First Set not Second and Second Set not First operations, choose two sets only.



Saving and Mailing Your Results Go to the top of the window

Once you have selected records, you can save them or forward them by e-mail.

To send the record or list of records by e-mail:

  1. Click Save/Mail to invoke the E-mail or Save Selected Records form.

  2. Choose a record format and fill in the e-mail address field. The Name, Subject and Text fields on the form are optional, and can be helpful in handling your e-mail.

  3. Click Send/Save.
To save the records on disk:

  1. Click Save/Mail to invoke the E-mail or Save Selected Records form.

  2. Choose a record format.

  3. Leave the e-mail address field blank. The Name, Subject and Text fields on the form are optional.

  4. Click Go. A Save file to PC screen appears.

  5. Click Save Selected. You will be prompted with your options for saving and naming the file.


Search Go to the top of the window

The Search function enables you to find records by entering keywords or phrases. To perform any search, click on Search from the menu bar. There are four different Search types available in Web OPAC: Basic; Multi-field; CCL; and Advanced Search.

Advanced Search Go to the top of the window

Advanced Search lets you search the database for keywords. You can use pull-down menus to specify fields and define search mode. The Web OPAC offers various fields such as Author, Subject and Title. The relationship between these three fields is handled by the logical operator, AND. To view a list of records, you can click on an adjacent link in the No. of records column.

Basic Search Go to the top of the window

In this screen, you can choose a field to be searched such as Author, Subject, Publication Year, System Number and more and types in keywords. Lowercase letters can also find matches of capitalized words. You can use the Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT in the search string. You can also use AND/OR/NOT as real words (that is, not as Boolean operators) when they are part of a phrase, as in, for example, TIT=gone but NOT forgotten, or if the operator is enclosed in double quotes, as in, for example WTI=gone but "NOT" forgotten (NOT is written in uppercase for the sake of clarity - it can be lowercase in the search query).

To retrieve search terms that are next to each other, choose Yes for Words adjacent.

Constructing a Search Go to the top of the window

A Search request is limited to the number of records the System is set to (for example, 99999). In addition, the default result display limit and sort limit in the results list window is 2000.

ALEPH supports and , or, and not Boolean operators. and is assumed if no operator is present. Operators can be typed in English or expressed by using any of the following conventions:

  • AND = + (plus sign)

  • AND = & (ampersand)

  • OR = | (pipe sign)

  • NOT = ~ (tilde)
All searches can be further limited by language, format, years and location. You can define these limits at the bottom of each Search screen.

In addition to the Search Hints at the bottom of each Search screen, the following are additional rules for all types of searches:

The ? character or * character (asterisk) can be placed at the left, right or middle of a portion of a word, but it can never be used more than once in a text string.

The # symbol can be used to find variant spellings in cases where one version of the word has one more character than another version. For example, colo#:r will find both color and colour; and arch#eology will find both archaeology and archeology.

The ! character can be used to find variant spellings in cases where a single character may vary. For example, wom!n will retrieve both woman and women.

The % symbol, followed by a number, can be placed between two words to indicate that you want the words to appear within a particular distance from each other, irrespective of what order the words appear in. For example, england %3 ballads will retrieve Ballads of England , Ballads of Merry Olde England and England and Her Ballads.

The ! character, followed by a number, can be placed between two words to indicate that you want the words to appear within a particular distance from each other, and in the same order in which you type the words. In this case, ballads !3 england will retrieve Ballads of England and Ballads of Merry Olde England but not England and Her Ballads.

The -> (hyphen and greater than symbols) can be placed between two words. This indicates that you want to retrieve records that have words from (and including) the first word, through the second word. This search is particularly helpful for limiting a set of records by year of publication. You cannot use to instead of the symbols.

Here is an example: 1993 -> 1996

Common Command Language Go to the top of the window

You can use Common Command Language (CCL) to search for words and headings in several different indexes at once. You must specify the code of the word and the heading indexes to be searched. The abbreviations used in CCL can be found in the following CCL Code section.

Here is an example:

((wau=carlyle or ruskin or hegel) and (wti=cultur?)) not (wsu=art?)

This search finds anything written by individuals named Carlyle or Ruskin or Hegel with a word beginning with cultur, for example, culture, cultures, cultural, and so on, in any title which has not been assigned a subject beginning with the word art, for example, art, arts, artist, artistic, and so on.

CCL Codes Go to the top of the window

Following are some of the abbreviations used by the Common Command Language:

TIT - Titles
AUT - Authors
SUB - Subjects
WRD - Words
WTI - Words in title field
WAU - Words in author / creator field
WPL - Words in place field
WPU - Words in publisher field
WDS - Date of sale (yyyymmdd)
WPS - Words in place of sale field
WSU - Words in subject field
WPR - Words in seller / subject (Provenance) field
WYR - Year of publication

Multi-field Search Go to the top of the window

The Multi-Field Search lets you search more than one word group at the same time. The more fields you can fill in, the narrower the search.

Working with Results Lists Go to the top of the window

The list of records appears in the results list window. When you enter a successful search query, or click on an underlined entry from the browse list, a Results List is displayed. The Results List can display up to 2000 records. The Results List shows how many records satisfy your query specifications. Each record in a Results List is sequentially numbered. The search results can be displayed in different formats.

There are two options that enable you to jump to designated records in the set, Jump to Text and Jump to #. These options are located above the Results List.

There is quite a lot of information on the results screen. The search is shown in the upper left side of the screen, below the top menu. Underneath this are a variety of options. They are listed below.

Create Subset Go to the top of the window

Creating a subset allows you to work with a group of records selected from a result set. Select records in the results list, and then click Create Subset. The results list will then display only the records you have put in the subset. This subset can be treated just like any result set: records can be selected, added to a list, sent by e-mail, or turned into another subset.

The new set will remain in Previous Searches until the session ends. The only way to distinguish a subset from a full records set is the number of records - there is no change the Search Request description as the original search does not change. Within Previous Searches, subsets can be combined with other searches or subsets.

For more help, see Previous Searches.

Refine Go to the top of the window

Refine allows you to broaden or narrow your search strategy by expanding your terminology or creating subsets of your search. You can modify your search by changing the Common Command Language. You can also add terms using the drop-down options, or you can execute an entirely new search.

Sort Go to the top of the window

You can sort records using predefined sort options. Additionally, in the Brief view table, you can click on a column heading to sort the list (for example, clicking Author sorts records by Author, then by Year).

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