CONSORTIUM OF USER LIBRARIESS
On-line Public Access Catalog (OPAC)
On-line tutorial
Prepared By: Consortium of User Libraries
Revised JULY, 2007
Using the On-line Public Access Catalog
Introduction.
The On-Line Public Access Catalog (OPAC) provides complete access to information
about every book in our library's collection. It displays the complete
bibliographic record, so you can find out what books we have, what each book is
about, who the author and narrator are, how long the book is, and whether a copy
is available to borrow. Anyone can browse the OPAC.
If you are a registered borrower, you can also
choose and order your own books using the OPAC and you may login into your account
and view information about what books you currently, have ever had, have on request,
and have on reserve as well as your profile of reading interests. To use the OPAC, you need to
have Internet access and a current web browser such as Internet Explorer,
Mozilla Firefox, or Netscape. If you want to use the OPAC to order books,
contact your Reader's Advisor for your User ID and Password. The OPAC is
completely accessible with screen reading technology.
The first screen or Main Menu provides links to "Search the On-line Catalog",
News and Regional Information", "Tutorial for New Users",
"Send Comments to the OPAC Mailbox", "Search
the National Library Service Database.",
"Login to Your Account." and "Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)". Clicking on any of these will bring up a new page which must be dismissed by
clicking on the X in the upper right
corner of the screen or the close button.
This tutorial covers the following topics:
Topic: Searching Methods
Topic: Working with Search Results
Topic: Login to My Account
Introduction.
The OPAC
offers you many different ways to find books in the Library's holdings. The
OPAC's search page allows you to perform searches based on one of five criteria:
author, subject, word in a title, title, narrator or word in a series. Additionally, you can
search all media, or restrict your search to just one medium (Braille, cassette, record/disc, large print, e-text, video or digital books).
You can also narrow your search results by selection from the drop down list of criteria for
Lowest Reading Level, Highest Reading Level, Fiction/Non-Fiction, Language, accepts violence, accepts descriptions of sex, and accepts strong language.
You can also order books using on-line versions of the Braille Book Review and
Talking Book Topics order forms. If you know the book's Title ID (usually two letters plus four or five digits, such as
RC54321 or BR12345) you can use it to conduct your search.
Media Types.
For each search term, (author,
title, subject, etc.) you may select one option from the list of media.
The following media options are available:
Cassette, including NLS cassettes (RC) and
locally produced cassettes.
Disc, both rigid and flexible (RD and FD).
Large print.
Braille, both NLS (BR) and locally produced.
Electronic Text.
Descriptive Video
Digital Books or
All
The "All" option is selected by default. When you
select this option, the OPAC lists all materials available for the search terms
you entered, regardless of the media. You can reduce the results list by
specifying the media you prefer. Conversely, you can increase the number of
results by not specifying a media.
Ordering from Talking Book Topics (TBT) or Braille
Book Review(BBR).
You can order directly from the latest issues of
Talking Book topics and Braille Book Review by using the Order from Talking Book
Topics link or the Order from Braille Book Review link. They both work the same,
so information presented here referring to Talking Book Topics will also apply to
Braille Book Review.
Each issue of Talking Book topics (TBT) is listed
in six parts. For example:
2006-3 May-June--Books for Adults Cassettes Fiction
2006-3 May-June--Books for Adults Cassettes Nonfiction
2006-3 May-June--Books for Children - Cassettes Fiction
2006-3 May-June--Books for Children - Cassettes Nonfiction
2006-3
May-June--Foreign Language Books Spanish
TBT Search Results Screen Navigation Buttons.
When you activate the link you want, you will see the TBT Search Results page.
At the top and bottom of the page are several navigation
buttons as follows:
New Search Button (Alt+s).
Activate the New Search button when you want to
start a new search. When you activate the New Search button, focus will take you
out of the TBT area to a blank Search page where you can type in terms for a new
search.
Return to TBT Index Hyperlink (Alt+t)
Returns you to the TBT index page.
View Book Bag (Alt+v).
Activate the View Book Bag button when you want
to see what books you have selected during the current OPAC session. The Book
Bag lists an entry for each title you have selected.
You may delete entries from the book bag by clicking on the "Delete" link.
The checkout button is on the bookbag screen along with the textboxes to enter a patron ID and password.
Search Results.
The Search Results list begins with a reminder of
the search you requested, the number of matches found, and the number displayed
on the screen. An example is:
TBT Search Results
Subject is: Adventure-Nonfiction
Total 415
Below this heading is a table which displays the
first twenty titles in the selected section of TBT. The search results
appear in a table with seven columns: Select Link, Row Number, Book Number (ID), Author (last name first), Title, Media,
and Selected/Not Selected
The results list is in the same order as TBT.
Media.
Media are displayed with a name such as "Cassette", "Disc",
"Large Print", "Descriptive Video", etc.
Author.
The author's name is displayed the same way it is
in TBT.
Title.
The "Select" link will toggle the "Selected/Not Selected column between "Selected and "Not Selected".
Activating the Bibliographic link will display the TBT entry including the annotation for that book.
Number.
The
number column displays the Library's book number/title ID, e.g. RC60104.
Next,
Previous, and Last Hyperlinks.
At the top
and bottom of the table which displays up to 20 titles, you will find the Next,
Last and Previous hyperlinks. Activating the "Next" hyperlink (by clicking on it)
will display the next 20 titles in your Search Results. Activating the "Last"
hyperlink will display the last 20 titles in your Search Results. Activating
the "Previous" hyperlink will display the previous 20 titles in your Search Results.
The "Previous" hyperlink
is only available after the first page.
Searching
By Author.
The most
common way to search for an author is by typing in the author's last name,
followed by a comma, then a space, and the author's first name. Example:
Michaels, Fern.
Occasionally, you may want to search for an
author but are unable to remember the author's full name or are unsure of the
spelling. Here are some suggestions to fully maximize the capabilities of an
Author search.
1. You do not need to enter the full name. You
can omit the author's first name if you are not sure of the name or its
spelling. Example: Is it Stephen King or Steven King? In this example, you could
type King in the last name field. The OPAC would generate a list of all books
authored by anyone whose last name is King.
For closer matches you can type in King, Ste,
omitting the last part of the first name. The OPAC will generate a list of books
authored by anyone whose last name is "King" and whose first name
begins with "Ste."
2. You can replace part of the name with an
percent sign. Example: If you don't know whether an author's last name is
spelled Anderson or Andersen, you can type Anders%n.
You can use a percent sign in both the author's
first and last name. Example: typing l%is, sinc%r returns all the entries for
Sinclair Lewis.
3. Do not type the author's middle initial, even
if you know what it is. You will usually get false search results of zero titles
found.
4. For authors whose first names consist of
initials, use the following format: Tolkien, J.R.R. Do not type spaces between
the initials, just periods.
However, if the first name consists of an initial
and then a name, type a space between the initial and the name. Example: Cooper,
J. David.
Searching By Subject.
If you
like to read books about a specific subject, you can conduct a search by
subject. Most of the books in our collection have been grouped by subject. The
OPAC will provide you with a list of over 600 subjects from which you may
choose. Example: Suppose you like to read books by Iowa authors. You can search
the OPAC for books categorized under the subject Regional Interest - Iowa
Authors.
We encourage you to try subject searches to find
something new! Here are some tips for searching by subject:
1. There are specific subjects for non-adult
readers. Juvenile refers to preschool through middle school readers. Young Adult
refers to high school and early college readers.
2. Some subject groupings are very broad; a
search may result in thousands of matches. Currently, the only way to narrow the
results is to select a specific media. Example: At the time of this writing a
search for "Mystery - Other" and "all media" resulted in
4,201 matches. Restricting the search to "Mystery - Other" and
"cassettes" resulted in 2,559 matches.
3. Some searches can take a long time to finish.
The time it takes for the OPAC to find and display a list of results depends on
your search criteria and the speed of your connection to the Internet. You may
experience several minutes of delay before your search results appear. The
subject groupings that result in the largest number of matches (and will take
the longest time to appear) are:
Best Sellers - Fiction, 1990-1999
Entertainment - Books Into Movie
Family - Juvenile
Family - Other
Family - Sagas
General Interest - Easy Books
Modern Writing Fiction - Other
Mystery - British
Mystery - Other
Romance - Other
Science Fiction - Other
Westerns - Fiction
Searching by Word in Title.
If you
are not sure of a book's full title, you may search for the book using a single
word that may appear in the title. Here are some tips for searching by the Word
in Title.
1. You can search for any ONE word in a title.
Example: "I heard about a book where there is a murder in a
cathedral." You can search for the word Cathedral and find T.S. Eliot's
Murder in the Cathedral or Margaret Truman's Murder at the National Cathedral,
along with a variety of other books that have the word "Cathedral" in
the title.
2. To help you locate titles in a series, we have
added a series search word to titles that have been identified as being part of
series. If the series has a specific order, then a number is added to the title.
The series search word is a unique combination of numbers and/or letters and is
often an abbreviated form of the series title. Example: Murder at the National
Cathedral by Margaret Truman is listed in the OPAC as MURDER AT THE NATIONAL
CATHEDRAL; 10 CAPCRIMES. (In this case, Capcrimes is an abbreviation for Capitol
Crimes.) The term PERRYMASON is added to all the Perry Mason mysteries without
any numbering. Searching by the series search word results in a list of all the
titles in our collection that are part of that series.
3. Any word you enter in the Word in Title search
is assumed to be incomplete. Example: A search using the word "Dream"
will find titles with Dream, Dreaming, Dreamer, Dreams, etc. Matching titles are
displayed alphabetically by author and then by title.
4. If a word appears more than once in the title,
the title will be listed in the results more than once. Example: A search using
the word "Dig" will display a variety of titles. The book Digs and
Diggers is listed twice, once for each time a variation of "Dig"
appears in the title.
5. A percent sign (%) can be used if you are
uncertain about the spelling of a word. Example: Many of our titles include the
British spelling of honor - honour. A search for HON%R will display titles with
both spellings.
Searching By Title.
You can
search for a book by its title. Here are some tips for searching by title.
1. Do not enter the word "A,"
"An," or "The" when the word appears at the beginning of a
title, since too many books begin with these words. Example: to find the book
entitled "The Great Gatsby", you can type "great Gatsby."
2. You can enter any number of CONSECUTIVE
BEGINNING words in a title. Example: If you were looking for The Case of the
Angry Mourner, you could type CASE OF THE ANGRY MOURNER or CASE OF THE ANGRY.
Entering ANGRY MOURNER will result in zero matches.
3. The last word you enter is assumed to be
incomplete. Example: A search for LITTLE PRINCE will result in both A Little
Princess and The Little Prince.
4. The percent sign (%) can be used as a wild
card in a variety of ways. For example, perhaps you are uncertain of the
spelling several words. The title of the book is pronounced "The mammer zap
and the donkey voo." A search for that spelling will result in zero
matches. However, a search for MAM%DON will result in The Mamur Zapt and the
Donkey-Vous.
You can also type the percent sign at the
beginning of a title. Example: %MARK TWAIN results in 35 titles. Mark Twain
without the percent sign locates only 19 titles.
5. Do not type punctuation in the title. Example:
Searching for WHAT'S SO FUNNY, KETU? will result in zero matches. To locate the
book, type WHATS SO FUNNY KETU.
6. You can search by both an author's name and a
word in the title. Example: if you know that Nora Roberts wrote a book about a
dahlia, you can type Roberts, Nora in the author field, then dahlia in the Word
in title field. This search yields two records, both of them for "Blue
Dahlia" by Nora Roberts.
Searching by Narrator.
The most
common way to search for a narrator is by typing in the narrator's last name
followed by a comma then a space and the narrator's first name. Example: Askey,
Bob.
If you don't remember the narrator's full name or
are unsure of the spelling, you can use these search tips. (Note: Searching by
narrator varies in some ways from an author search.)
1. You do not need to enter the full name. You
can omit the narrator's first name if you are unsure of it. Example: Is it Anne
Mullen or Ann Mullen? You can type in the last name, Mullen, or enter the last
name and only the first letter or letters of the first name. Example: Mullen, A.
2. You can replace part of the name with a
percent sign. Example: If you don't know whether a narrator's last name is
spelled Pederson or Peterson, type Pe%erson.
3. If a narrator has an initial as the first
name, use the following format: Linton, J.P. Do not type spaces between the
initials, just periods.
Return
to Topic List
Introduction.
Once you
have entered your search criteria, the OPAC generates a list of the books in the
Library's holdings matching your criteria. The first 20 results will appear on
the Search Results page. Each title is a link to the Bibliographic Details page
for that book. Activating the link will give you detailed information about that
title.
About the Search Results Page.
After
you enter search criteria and choose the OK button on the Search page, a Search
Results page appears listing the books found that match your search criteria.
The Search Results page has a series of buttons at the top which are repeated at
the bottom of the page. Between the two sets of buttons is the list of titles
that match your search criteria.
Search
Results Page Buttons
Five
buttons appear at the top, and again at the bottom, of the Results page: New
Search, View Book Bag, Update Book Bag; Empty Book Bag and Checkout.
New
Search (Alt+s).
Activate the New Search button when you want to
start a new search. When you activate the New Search button, focus will return
to the Search page where you can type in terms for a new search.
Important! Do NOT use your web browser's Back
button (Alt+left arrow in Internet Explorer) to return to the Search page and
begin a new search. If you activate the Back button, you will lose any
information you have entered in the current session.
View
Book Bag (Alt+v).
Activate
the View Book Bag button when you want to see what books you have selected
during the current OPAC session. The Book Bag lists an entry for each title you
have selected. Checkout
(Alt+c) on the view bookbag screen will activate
the Checkout process for the books you have in your Book Bag and are ready to check
them out. Before you activate the Checkout button, you must fill in the Patron ID
and password text boxes..
Search
Results.
The Search Results list begins with a reminder of
the search you requested, the number of matches found, and the number displayed
on the screen. An example is:
Search Results
Adventure-Nonfiction
Total 415
Below this heading is a table which displays the
first twenty titles that match your search criteria. The search results appear
in a table with five columns: Media, Author (last name first), Title, Number,
and Add to Book Bag.
The results list is sorted alphabetically first
by author, and then by title.
Media.
The name of the media such as "Cassette"
Author.
The author's name is displayed as last name,
first name, and then middle initial. Some longer names may not be displayed
completely. Examples: Wilder, Laura Ingalls will be shortened to Wilder, Laura
Ingal; and National Library Service will be shortened to National Library Ser.
Title.
Each
title is formatted as a link. Activating the title link will display complete
information about the book.
Long titles may not display completely. Example:
The title Chicken Soup for the Soul; 101 Stories to Open the Heart and Rekindle
the Spirit will be shortened to CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SOUL; 101 STORIES TO OPEN
THE HEART AND.
Number.
The number column displays the Library's book
number, e.g. RC60104.
Next Hyperlink
(Alt+n), Previous Hyperlink (Alt+p) and Last Hyperlink (Alt+l).
At the
end of the table which displays up to 20 titles, you will find the Next Button
and/or the Previous Button. Activating the Next button will display the next 20
titles in your Search Results. Important: Be sure you have updated the Book Bag
for all selections before activating the Next or Previous button or you will
lose your selections.
About the Bibliographic Details Page.
Once you have selected a book entry from the
results list by activating the link associated with it, the Bibliographic page
for that book entry appears.
The Bibliographic page displays information about
the book. At the top right of the page click on the X to return to the search results.
Information about the Book
The bibliographic display screen contains specific information about the book with the most
important information first (Book Number, Media, Author, Title, Annotation,
Order Status, Copies on Hand, and Unfilled Reserves).
Click Here for a complete explanation of all
fields on the Bibliographic Details Page.
Exit this screen using one of the buttons
described above.
About the Book Bag
The Book
Bag feature allows you to add as many books as you want in one session before
you check out. You can conduct multiple searches, browse Talking Book Topics or
Braille Book Review, and collect your findings in the Book Bag. At any time
during your session, or when you are ready to check out, you can review your choices in the bookbag, remove books you decide you don't want, and choose which books you want
sent immediately (Now), and which ones you want placed on your request list to be sent
later.
Book
Bag Hyperlinks and Navigation Buttons
At the
top of the screen are 2 navigation
buttons and 2 text boxes:
New Search Button Alt+s
Check Out Button Alt+c
Patron ID Textbox
Password Textbox
Books in Your Book Bag
Below
these buttons and textboxes is the
table containing information about each book
allows you to review and change items in your Book Bag. The table contains the
following fields:
Delete Hyperlink
Activating this will delete the title from the bookbag
Select Hyperlink
Activating this will toggle the value in the "Send Now/Send Later" column between
"Later", the default and "Now".
Row Number
This is the number of the row for a table entry
ID Number.
Each title is a link to the Bibliographic Details page.
Title.
Each title is a link to the Bibliographic Details
page. You can review the information about the book and use the X button to return to
the book bag when you are finished.
Media.
Be sure that the media shown is one that you use.
For example, some books are only available in Braille. If you are not a Braille reader you will not want to select a Braille book.
Author.
The name of the Author.
Send
Now or Later
This option lets you choose whether to have the
book sent immediately, (Now or as soon as it is available), or to have it placed on
your request list and sent at some time in the future. Use the "Select" hyperlink
to control this value by toggling it between the Later and Now values.
Important: The default is Send Later. If you do
not change this option for any of the books you've chosen, you will not receive
the books in the near future. They will be placed on your request list and sent
later when you return books.
Changing this option to Send Now for specific
books will cause those books to be sent immediately or as soon as they become
available.
Next, Previous, and Last Hyperlinks.
If you have more than 20 books in your book bag,
the Next, Last and/or Previous hyperlinks will let you navigate the list twenty books at a
time.
Exit this screen only after updating your book
bag, and use the
navigation buttons on the screen rather than your browser's navigation options.
About the Checkout Page.
Before you choose the Checkout button on the view Bookbag page, you should complete the Patron ID and Password fields.
User ID and Password fields.
Three fields must be completed before you can
check out successfully. These are:
User ID (Alt+u).
Enter your User ID received from your reader ADVISOR. or It will be a
combination letters and numbers.
Password (Alt+p).
Your password is a number of up to five digits.
Your reader advisor will provide this number to you.
If you are an Interlibrary Loan Patron, you will get an additional screen with information
to complete as listed below:
Borrowing Library Location.
This field is filled in with Iowa by default. Do
not change this value.
Completing your Order
After
you have filled in these fields, you have four choices:
OK (Alt+o).
Completes
your order, and sends a confirmation screen.
Returns you to the blank search form.
Return
to Topic List
Login to My Account
My Account
provides information about your book lists, including books you have out
now,
books you
have read and returned, and books you have placed on request.
Books you have on reserve are also listed.
Please note that books on reserve will be sent
out as soon as they are available.
To change
author and subject preferences in your profile, please contact your reader
advisor. Access to account information is shown as the menu
items that follow:
My Lists
Now Has – Books
currently checked out to you<
Has Had Arranged
by Date – Books read and returned
Has Had Arranged
by Author/Title – Books read and returned
Requests – Books
you would like to receive sometime<
Reserves – Books
you would like to receive as soon as a copy becomes
available
Main
Menu
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