|
PrairieCat can be very easy to search or very complicated,
depending on how precise you want your search to be. If you simply
type in your terms in the Search for: box in the initial
Quick Search screen and press the enter key, the system will give
you tens, hundreds or thousands of results in ranked order. Or you
can be very specific, for instance focusing your search to film/videos
with the keyword counseling in the subject field.
The UIS library has created a guide for PrairieCat. Demo!
indicates there is a QuickTime video demonstration of the particular
feature. If you do not have Apple QuickTime on your computer, go
to http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/
to download the free player.
Useful Tips for All Searches
| Quick Search | Guided Keyword
Search | Limiters | Results
List
Useful Tips for All Searches
- Truncation or Stemming - If you want to find variations
on a particular word, type the stem of the word followed by a
?, e.g. educat? to
find education, educate, educates, or educational.
- Exact Phrase - Put your terms in quotation marks, e.g.
"human resources".
- Hyperlinked Subjects - Once you have found a relevant
book, note the subjects given the book. You may click on the relevant
subject to find similar books.
PrairieCat offers two different search screens, Quick Search
and Guided Keyword Search.
Use Quick Search:
- when you know the exact author or exact title
of the book
- when you want to browse subjects
- when you want to do broad keyword searches in the entire
record.
Use Guided Keyword Search:
- when you want to look for words in a particular field
(anywhere in the title, subjects, etc.)
- when you want to combine words in different fields
(author, title, and/or subject)
Quick Search
You will want to structure your query differently for each of the
Search by: choices.
Any Word Anywhere | Start
of Title or Start of Magazine/Journal Title | Boolean
Search (use and, or, not) | Browse
Subject | Browse Author
| Browse Prolific Author/Composer
| Browse Call Number
Any Word Anywhere
This is the broadest search you can do in PrairieCat, and the
one most similar to an Internet search engine. The system will
rank the results based on the frequency and the location of your
search terms. (Words appearing in the subject or title field are
weighted higher than words in the notes field.)
- The system will automatically insert an OR in between words.
(Don't include AND, OR, or NOT -- the system will actually look
for those terms in the record.)
- To require that the word appear in the record, put a + sign
in front of the word.
- To require that a word not appear in the record, put an ! in
front of the word.
Demo! Click
to view QuickTime Video Demonstration.
Start of Title or Start of Magazine/Journal Title
If you know the name of the book or periodical you are looking
for, type it in, omitting the initial A, An, or The. To
find Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, type grapes
of wrath.
Demo! Click
to view QuickTime Video Demonstration.
Boolean Search (use and, or, not)
Boolean logic consists of using connectors to join terms, or the
words you are looking for. PrairieCat uses AND, OR,
and NOT. (Note: connectors do not have to be in uppercase -- just doing it for clarity. In fact PrairieCat ignores upper
or lowercase entirely.)
- If you want both the terms red and blue to appear, use AND,
e.g. red AND blue.
- If you don't care whether red or blue appears, use OR,
e.g. red OR blue.
- And if you want the word red to appear, but not if blue is present
as well, use NOT, e.g. red NOT
blue.
- If you type red blue, PrairieCat will return
with the error message "The system could not interpret your
search statement." To look for the exact phrase red blue,
put quotation marks around the phrase, e.g. "red
blue".
You can structure fairly complicated searches using the connectors,
but if you are going to use both AND and OR you will
need to ñnestî your query via parentheses, so that the database
knows what to look for first. In short, if you are going to use
OR for synonyms, put parentheses around the OR statement.
If we were looking for a record with either red or
blue, and with either cars or trucks,
you would structure it thus:
(red OR blue) AND (cars OR trucks)
If we didn't use the parentheses and just typed:
red OR blue AND cars OR trucks
PrairieCat would read the statement straight through and retrieve
results that had the words red or blue and cars,
but it would also retrieve any result that had the word trucks,
whether the word red or blue was present or not. Putting
parentheses around the OR portion tells the database ñSearch this
part first, then look for the remaining.î So it would look for red
or blue and form a set of results, then it would look for
cars or trucks and form another set. Then it would
compare the two sets to see which results overlap.
For Boolean logic databases, the results are in alphabetical order. You
can resort the list by author or date, using the Sort by:
pulldown menu at the top of the results screen.
Demo! Click
to view QuickTime Video Demonstration.
Browse Subject
If the subject you are looking for is one concept: ADHD, John Steinbeck,
natural selection, etc., use Browse Subject. Note: if you are looking
for a book about a person, you must type it in last name,
first name. The system will return an alphabetical list
of the Library of Congress subject headings, starting with your
search terms.
If there are no titles matching your search, you are probably not
using the same wording Library of Congress uses for your topic.
Click on the green See Also
button to see suggestions for Library of Congress subject headings.
For instance, the search ADHD
finds no matches, but if I click on the See
Also button, the system tells me to use Attention-deficit
hyperactivity disorder.
Demo! Click
to view QuickTime Video Demonstration.
Browse Author
For author searches, you need to type in last name, first name,
since the authors are arranged alphabetically by last name. Use
this when you know the exact name of the author, or you at least
know the author's last name and are willing to browse an alphabetical
list.
Demo! Click
to view QuickTime Video Demonstration.
Browse Prolific Author/Composer
Use Prolific Author/Composer when you are looking for a particular
work by an author. For instance, if you type in steinbeck,
john as a Prolific Author, you will see an alphabetical
list of all the items written by him, rather than just an alphabetical
list of authors.
Browse Call Number
Type in as much as you know of the call number. Include all punctuation
and spaces. For instance, the call number PS508.C6 A4 would
be typed as ps5808.c6 a4. Or
you could just type ps508.c6
and browse the results.
Guided Keyword Search
The Guided Keyword Search screen allows more precision in your
search. You can specify where in the record you want your words
or phrases to appear. All of these searches use Boolean logic, but
you don't have to type in the connectors. Instead you can just click
on the connector you want.
If your topic is more than one concept, use the Guided Keyword
Search. For instance, if you are looking for books on women and
politics in Illinois, and you are unsure what the Library of Congress
subject heading for that would be, then you could type women
politics illinois in the Search for: box, tell
the system to look for all of these terms, and Search
by: Subject Words. (Note: Do not type in AND, OR, or NOT in
the Search for: boxes. Use the any of these/all of these/as
a phrase choices instead, or type the terms individually in
each of the Search for: boxes.)
Demo! Click
to view QuickTime Video Demonstration.
Limiters
There are various ways you can focus your search in PrairieCat.
The most common limiters are on the Quick Search screen. To see
all the possibilities, click on the gray More Limits button at the
bottom of the screen. (If you set limits on this screen, they will
remain for all of your searches until you reset it.)
- You can limit to a particular language, though for UIS
holdings this really isn't a concern since 99% of our holdings
are in English.
- You can limit to a particular location within the library
(archives, government documents, reference, etc.)
- You can limit to a particular year of publication.
- You can limit to a particular primary format (book, magazine/journal,
video, etc.).
Results List
The search results in PrairieCat bring up a brief record for
each item: author, title, publication year, the library location,
call number, and the status of the item. If the item is on the shelf,
the status is Available. If someone else has the item, the status
is Checked out or Renewed. If there is more than one copy of the
item, the system can't list each status on this screen. Click on
the link Multiple item statuses. Click for details.
To view more information about the item (hyperlinked subject headings,
length, publisher, etc.) click on the corresponding number to bring
up a full record for the item.
You may mark those records you are interested in, and at the bottom
of the search results screen, you may print, download, or e-mail
the records.
|
