User’s Guide to the Trask Library
What's in the System
Over 200,000 items are cataloged in the system including books, microforms, audio-visual materials and periodical titles. When you look up a book in the LIBRARY CATALOG, you will find the call number of that book, and a listing of its location in the library. Books with the designation STACKS are in the Library of Congress collection found on the Upper Level and Floors 2-4 of the building. The CUTTER books are located on the Lower Level and Floors 1-2. Those marked with SPECIAL are located in the Special Collections section of the Library. Other designated locations that you might find are REFERENCE, AV-AREA, OVERSIZED, PERIODICAL, RESERVES, MICROFORMS, CHECKEDOUT, etc. If you are not sure where these locations are or what they mean, please ask at the Circulation Desk.
The system also includes:
- Information Desk: library hours.
- User Services: provides your personal user record, such as items you have checked out, their due dates, fines due (if any), and status of items you have requested to be put on hold. Also includes instructions for renewing items. (You may ask at the Circulation Desk for information on how to access your record.)
- Reserve Desk: provides lists of items on reserve. You may search by instructor, course name or course number.
PLEASE NOTE: Remote access to the catalog is at http://www.ants.edu. On the right side of the page select the SEARCH CATALOG link.
SEARCH SCREENS
Quick Search
Quick Search is the default search screen for:
- Search Everything - keyword search of all fields
- Author - search in any order
- Title - enter all or part of title
- Subject - enter a word or phrase
- Series
- Periodical Title
Use Power Search option to combine two or more fields for searching. You may also qualify your search by publication year, language, or item type.
AUTHOR SEARCH
All or part of an author's name in any order can be searched. For example:
- HEIM, M or S. MARK HEIM
- world council churches
TITLE SEARCH
Type in all or part of a title to be searched. Both of the following
titles searches will produce the same search results.
- mine eyes have seen the glory
- mine eyes glory
SUBJECT SEARCH
Type in a word or phrase. For example:
- salvation
- infant baptism
AUTHOR WITH TITLE
This search can be used when you are looking for a specific item. For example:
- author = Pazmino
- title = latin american journey
BROWSING
Use Call Number Browsing option to browse titles as they are on the shelf.
SEARCH FUNDEMENTALS
STOPWORDS
You should ignore the following words in searching:
| a | an | as | at | be | but | by | do | for | if | in | is | it | of | on | the | to |
For example, the title search CITY HILL retrieves the
same results as the search THE CITY ON A HILL.
To search a stopword put it in double quotes.
For example: "as it" was written
EXACT PHRASE SEARCHING
Surround multiple words to be treated as a phrase in single quotes.
For example: 'liberation theology'
TRUNCATION ($)
Use the dollar sign ($) if the spelling of the search term is unknown
or if variant forms of a word are desired.
For example, paul$ retrieves items with words paul, paul's, pauline, etc.
WILDCARD (?)
Use the question mark (?) to indicate a single character substitution.
For example, WOM?N retrieves items with the words WOMAN and WOMEN.
BOOLEAN SEARCHING
Search terms may be combined using the words:
- SAME, WITH, NEAR, AND, OR, NOT
- Must put that word in quotation marks. For example, bread "not" stone.
Select Print Capture tab.
- Choose the records to print.
- We recommend that at the view of records box you change option from full to brief, if you only need brief author/title information and the call number.
- Select print or email for output.