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. 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 web address for the OPAC is:
http://lbphcat.carnegielibrary.org
This tutorial covers the following topics:
Topic:
Searching Methods
Topic:
Working with Search Results
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, or narrator. Additionally, you can search all media, or restrict your search to just one medium (Braille, cassette, record, large print, e-text, or video). 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.
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 Videos
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.
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 toTalking Book Topics will also apply to Braille Book Review.
Each issue of Talking Book topics (TBT) is listed in six parts. For example:
When you activate the link you want, you will see the TBT Search Results page. At the top and bottom of the page are six navigation buttons:
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.
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.
Returns you to the TBT index page.
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.
Activate the Update Book Bag button after you have added or deleted a book from your Book Bag. If you choose a book, but forget to activate the Update Book Bag button before you leave the page, the book you have chosen will not be added to the Book Bag.
Activate the Empty Book Bag button when you no longer want to check out the titles in the Book Bag.
Activate the Checkout button when you have the books you want in your Book Bag and are ready to check them out. When you activate the Checkout button, a Login and Checkout page appears.
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
415 records found
Displaying records 1 through
20.
Below this heading is a table which displays the first twenty titles that in the selected section of TBT. 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 in the same order as TBT.
The author's name is displayed the same way it is in TBT.
Each title is formatted as a link. Activating the title link will display the TBT entry for that book.
The number column displays the Library's book number, e.g. RC60104.
This column is formatted as a combo box** with the default value set to no. To choose the book, change this value to yes, then activate the Update Book Bag button (Alt-U) to complete. The screen will refresh, and the book you have chosen will disappear from the Search Results list and appear in the Book Bag.
Important: If you forget to update your Book Bag before leaving this page, you will lose any selections you have made.
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.
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.
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 local authors. You can search the OPAC for books categorized under the subject Regional Interest - Local 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Activate the Update Book Bag button after you have added or deleted a book from your Book Bag. If you choose a book, but forget to activate the Update Book Bag button before you leave the page, the book you have chosen will not be added to the Book Bag.
Activate the Empty Book Bag button when you no longer want to check out the titles in the Book Bag.
Activate the Checkout button when you have the books you want in your Book Bag and are ready to check them out. When you activate the Checkout button, a Login and Checkout page appears.
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
Subject is:
Adventure-Nonfiction
415 records found
Displaying records 1 through
20.
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.
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.
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.
The number column displays the Library's book number, e.g. RC60104.
This column is formatted as a combo box** with the default value set to no. To choose the book, change this value to yes, then activate the Update Book Bag button (Alt-U) to complete. The screen will refresh, and the book you have chosen will disappear from the Search Results list and appear in the Book Bag.
Important: If you forget to update your Book Bag before leaving this page, you will lose any selections you have made.
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.
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 and bottom of the page are sets of four buttons:
Returns you to the blank search form.
Returns you to the Search Results screen. Be sure to use this button instead of the browser's back button.
Adds the current book to your Book Bag and returns you to your Search Results page.
Takes you to the check out screen.
Between the two sets of buttons is the 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.
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, remove books you decide you don't want, and choose which books you want sent immediately, and which ones you want placed on your request list to be sent later.
At the top and bottom of the screen are sets of five
navigation buttons:
New Search Alt+s
Return to Search Results
Alt+r
Update Book Bag Alt+u
Empty Book Bag Alt+e
Check Out
Alt+c
Below these buttons is the page heading followed by the number of records found (that is, the number of books in your book bag) and which ones are displayed on the screen (such as 21 through 34). For example:
Contents of Book Bag
34 records
found
Displaying records 21 through 34.
A table containing information about each book allows you to review and change items in your Book Bag. The table contains the following fields:
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.
Each title is a link to the Bibliographic Details page. You can review the information about the book and use the Return to Book Bag (Alt+r) button when you are finished.
This is a yes/no field which allows you to remove a book by changing it from yes to no. If you change its value to no and update the book bag, the book will disappear from the book bag.
This option lets you choose whether to have the book sent immediately, (or as soon as it is available), or to have it placed on your request list and sent at some time in the future.
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.
Important: You must update the book bag before leaving this screen for any reason, including viewing a specific title's information, or using the next button to view additional books. If you don't, your changes will be lost.
If you have more than 20 books in your book bag, the Next or Previous buttons 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.
When you choose the Checkout button, the Login to Checkout page will appear. You should complete the User ID and Password fields, then use the OK or navigation buttons to continue.
Three fields must be completed before you can check out successfully. These are:
Enter your User ID received from your reader advisor. This will be a combination of numbers and letters.
Your password is a number of up to five digits. Your reader advisor will provide this number to you.
This field is filled in by default. Do not change this value.
After you have filled in these fields, you have four choices:
Completes your order, and sends a confirmation screen.
clears the user name and password fields. It does not affect the Book Bag.
Returns you to the blank search form. Your Book Bag remains intact.
returns you to the Book Bag page without processing your order.
Return to Topic List Begin Searching the Catalog