Once you have selected "Browse Title," you will be given a text box in which you can type the title of the book.
After entering your search, the system will retrieve and display all of the titles that match the title that you entered. (If there is only one title, it will immediately bring up the record that you want.) Look through the list and find the correct title, if necessary using the keystrokes ctrl-N to move to the next page or ctrl-P to go back to the previous page. In order to select the title, type the number of the line on which the title appears and press ENTER.
The system will then bring up the record for the title that you have selected. This record gives you a great deal of information, incluting the libraries that hold the book. In order to discover exactly which libraries hold a particular item, however, you need to press ctrl-N at least once, to scroll past the part of the holdings that says UIUC Acquisitions and UIUC Additional Information. This will not give you useful information about the holdings of the item.
To find out whether a book is available, select the line number of the library in which you are interested. This will give the number of copies held at the library and their availability status. If an item is charged, it has already been checked out by another person.
If you are unsure of the exact title of the book, it is wiser to do a Keyword Title search rather than a Browse Title search. In this case, start from the Find menu and select the Keyword Title option.
Enter the title words in the text box. You may enter them in any order. For example, suppose that you want to find the record for a book whose title has something to do with the use of mechanical technology in agriculture. Enter only the important words; if you choose to enter common words like "and", "or", "but", or "American", (the list goes on and on) the system will inform you that it will take a great deal of time to complete the search and ask if you want to ignore the common words. It is wisest to ignore them; if there are too many records containing the common words it is possible to run out of user memory and get bumped out of the online catalog.
When you have entered your search terms, the system will bring up a list of all titles that contain the terms you selected. Using ctrl-N to scroll forward in the list and ctrl-P to scroll backwards, locate the title in which you are interested and enter the line number of the record.
This should bring up the record for the book. In order to find out which libraries hold the item in question, press ctrl-N to get past the UIUC Acquisitions and UIUC Additional Information holdings. These will tell you nothing about which libraries hold the book! You can scroll through the list of titles using ctrl-N until you find an available copy at a nearby library.
To find out whether a book is available, select the line number of the library in which you are interested. This will give the number of copies held at the library and their availability status. If an item is charged, it has already been checked out by another person.
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Library Gateway Homepage Comments to: Engineering Library Updated on: 08.24.99 MCS |