Using
HANS: The Ohlone College Online Catalog Using
HANS: The Ohlone College Online Catalog Access HANS on the World Wide Web from the library's home
page at:
http://www2.ohlone.edu/org/library.
The Library's Online Catalog is a database of records. Each record contains information about a single item. An item can be:
A record contains this information:
Some records also contain:
The Online Catalog allows you to retrieve records in several ways:
The Online Catalog also lets you limit your retrieved records in various ways:
The Online Catalog does not contain listings of periodical articles. To find these, you need to use a periodical index in either online or print format. Please see our handout: "Summary of Online Library Resources" for a description and login information for electronic periodical databases.
From the library web page, click on the HANS icon to go into the online catalog.
On the simple search screen, radio buttons name different ways of searching HANS
In addition to these simple search options, you may click on the tab for Builder to construct your search statement with drop down menus, or Course Reserve to search for materials your instructor has put on reserve. Each type of search has a slightly different format and set of directions. We will be exploring each of these search options beginning with Keyword search.
The default search in HANS is a Keyword search. This option is automatically selected when you open the search screen. Keyword search works much like the search engines you find on the Internet.
Search Steps:
These steps can be used for each kind of search that you conduct in HANS:
1. Type your term(s) into the "Search For:" box
2. If appropriate, select a limit option from the "Quick Limit" menu,
such as "Last 5 years," "Music CD," or "Periodical"
3. If you make a mistake or want to change your search, click on "reset"
4. Hit enter or click on the "Search" button to submit the search
5. Click on the "New Search" button in the top tool bar to do a new
search
When you search for a combination of search terms, for example: Sikh religious philosophy, the Keyword search will return:
Once all these records are retrieved, Keyword search sorts them by relevancy. The most "relevant" records are displayed at the top of the list, and the least "relevant" at the bottom.
Keyword search uses a complicated formula to decide which records are the most relevant, but basically:
Keyword search is the best search option to use when you don't know exactly what you are looking for. Unlike other search options, Keyword search will retrieve records even if some of your search words are not present in the catalog.
However, since the basic logic of Keyword search is to return any records matching any of your keywords (with the most relevant first), Keyword search may retrieve a lot of irrelevant records. You can increase the precision of your Keyword searches by using special search syntax, for example:
When Keyword search has retrieved a screenful of records, a display of titles appears.
Here are the main parts of the Titles Display:
1. "Search Request:" This indicates the current search that you are conducting.
2. "Search Results:" The number of records your search has retrieved.
3. Relevance. The colored bullets in this column tell you how "relevant" each item is to your search. Records are sorted by relevance, with the most relevant at the top. Red bullets indicate the highest level of relevance, followed by green, blue, gold and black. Within each color, more bullets indicate more relevant items.
4. Title Long. This column contains the full (long) title of each item.
5. Author. This column contains the name(s) of any author(s).
6. Date. Publication date. A date with a dash; e.g.: "1971-" means that the item was first published in 1971, but has been published since then. To see what year is currently held by the library, display the full record.
7. Library Location, Call number and Status. This line tells you exactly where to find the book in the library. It will also tell you whether or not the book has been loaned, or checked out to a borrower, and if so, when it is due back. A book that has the status "Check shelves" should be on the shelf under its call number. For materials with more than one copy, the note "Title has multiple holdings" will display. In this case, click on the title to see call number and status for all copies.
The Titles list is sorted by relevance, with the most relevant first. From the Titles Display screen you can re-sort the results by date, by title, or by author. You can also limit your results by location, date, item type and many other criteria by clicking on the Limit Results button on this screen.
Click on any title to display complete information for that record.
The first screen displays basic information about the item, including the "Holdings" information: location and call number for each copy held. The status of each copy also displays here and will tell you whether or not the book has been loaned, or checked out to a borrower, and if so, when it is due back. A book that has the status "Check shelves" should be on the shelf under its call number.
You can click on any element of the record that appears as a hypertext link, to conduct another search. For example, try clicking on a blue subject heading, to automatically execute a Subject Heading Search (Subject Heading searches are explained in more detail below).
To see more detailed information about a title, such as physical description and notes, click on the button labeled "Full Display."
If there is a table of contents available for the record, it will display as part of the full record.
Click on the Titles List button to go back to the Titles Display listing.
In addition to the Keyword search, from the main Simple Search Screen you may select one of four different index searches:
Each of these searches places you within an alphabetical index of subjects, author names, titles, or call numbers.
Subject/Author/Title searches work best when:
A Subject Heading search can give you more precise results than a Keyword search. To start a Subject Heading Search, under "Search by," select the radio button next to "Subject Heading." In the search box, enter a Library of Congress subject heading, for example: Indians of North America and click on Search. (Note: The subject index search will only work if you enter an "official" Library of Congress Subject Heading. See the Ohlone Library Library of Congress Subject Headings Guide for more information.
When you click on Search, a display of subject headings appears on the screen. In effect, it is an alphabetical index of subject headings. All the headings begin with your search term Indians of North America. The Titles column indicates the number of records listed under each subject heading. To use the headings display: scroll through the index of headings and click (once) on the Subject Heading that interests you. This will call up a "Titles" display, and from here you can click on a title to display its full information.
In the # column of the "Headings" Display, a See/See also button sometimes appears. This message means that there are related or alternative headings that you may be interested in. To access these cross references: Click on the See/See also button:
Click on any cross reference in the Reference Information box to execute a search on that subject heading, or click on Headings in the top tool bar to return to the original list of headings.
The Author Search works much like the Subject Heading Search, except that the radio button next to "Author" should be selected before you search. To search for an author, enter the last name first followed by the first name, for example: Morrison, Toni. The resulting "Headings" display shows you a list of author names instead of subject headings. Click on any of these to bring up a list of titles by that author.
The Title search shows you an alphabetical list of titles, each of which begins with your search words (for example, "How to be"). There is no intermediate "Headings" display. Enter a title to search or as much of the title as you can remember, leaving off initial articles such as "the" "a" or "an." For example, try: "Color Purple."
The "call number" is printed on a label attached to book spines, or to boxes containing videotapes and other audio-visual items. The call number does two things: it gives an item a precise shelf location; and it groups items together by subject.
The Call Number Search lets you scan items that are shelved in a particular subject classification. The Call Number Search covers books; it does not include periodicals or audio-visual items. Since the materials in the Ohlone Library are organized by Library of Congress Classification, you can enter the two letter subject area designation to search. Ask the reference librarian for help with this type of search.
Once you have entered a search, click on the Previous and Next buttons to move back and forth through the call number index.
Command search lets you use three "boolean operators" (AND, OR and NOT) with search terms in order to control your search results more precisely.
Examples:
Note that you can build these searches more visually by using the "Builder" Search, as described in the next section.
Builder lets you control your search results more precisely than any of the other search options:
For example, you can combine a subject search for Indians of North America with a search for titles containing the word Navajo. Try clicking on the tab for "Builder Search." In the first "Search for:" box, enter Indians of North America, use the drop down menus to change "all of these" to "as a phrase" and set the "Search In:" drop down menu to "subject." Next type Navajo in the next "search for:" box. Set the choice in the "Search in:" box to "title." Make sure that the radio button between these two search criteria is set to "AND," and click on "Search." You should retrieve only records with both "Indians of North America" as a subject heading, and "Navajo" in the title.
Each search that you do on the Online Catalog is stored in the system's memory until you log out. By selecting the "Search History" button in the top tool bar, you can go back to any previous search and either re-execute it, or modify it.
The Course Reserve Search allows you to look up any items that are held on reserve for any course. You can do this by instructor, department, or course name. Reserve items include cataloged library books and media materials, as well as photocopied articles held at the circulation desk. All readings held on reserve can also be looked up by title or keyword using Keyword search, Command search, Builder, or Title Index Search.
More extensive than the "Quick Limits" drop down menu, the Online Catalog's Limit feature, accessed by the "Limits" button at the bottom of the search screen, lets you restrict your search by:
You can use the "Limit" button with the following search methods:
The "Limit" button is not available with:
To use the "Limit" feature:
You can print the results of your Online Catalog searches or save them to disk (download them). You can also email them to yourself. You can get free e-mail accounts at several sites on the Internet including Hotmail.com and mail.yahoo.com.
In order to print, save or email multiple records, you must first mark them.
You can mark records from the "Titles" display by clicking in the check box to the left of each record. You can cancel any marking by clicking again in the check box to deselect it.
To print a single record, first display it by clicking on its title in a title display list. Use the browser print menu option to print the record.
To print multiple records, or a plain text version of a single record, from the "Titles" display screen, mark the records you want to print by selecting their check boxes. Next, click on the disk icon under "Save Options." This will display your results in a plain text format. Now you can use your browser's print command to print the records.
Records are saved in a text file that can be read by most word processing programs.
From the full display of a single record, or from the "Titles" display where you have selected multiple records as described above, click on the disk icon under "Save Options." This will display your results in a plain text format. Select save from the File menu of your browser to save to a disk or to the hard drive of your machine if that option is available to you.
When you click on the "email" button, type your email address and
click on the OK button. Your marked records will be emailed
to your account immediately.
Congratulations! You have now learned the basic use of the online library catalog. Reference librarians will be happy to help you with any problems you have using the online catalog - Please ask us for help!
Please contact librarians@ohlone.edu
with your questions, comments, and suggestions.
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Copyright © 2004 Ohlone College.
All rights reserved.
last updated 9/7/2004