Using the Osterlin Library Online Catalog (WebCat)

Books, Reference Books, Government Documents and Media which are physically located within the Osterlin Library, as well as some online titles, are indexed in the Osterlin Library Online Catalog (WebCat). WebCat is an easy-to-use web-based catalog, enabling the user to search by keyword or specifically for author, title, subject, or series.

Tips for using WebCat:

• To Find books or government documents once you have located the records in WebCat -- see the online Guide to Finding a Book on the Shelf.
  • How to search for reference books -- click here.
• Holds -- Place a hold on a book which is currently checked out. Placing a hold adds your name to a waiting list for an item that is currently checked out. Anyone with an active patron barcode can place a hold. Steps to placing a hold:
  • Search for and display the item you want. You can place a hold only if all copies are currently checked out.
  • While displaying the record, click on the Request button at the top of the record.
  • On the next screen, select Place Hold.
  • On the Place Hold screen, enter the date by which you need the book and your User ID (barcode) from your library card. The book call number and ID are already entered.
  • Click Place Request and the Hold will be submitted. You will be notified when the book has been returned.
• Hotlinked Headings -- Some headings are hotlinked and full records in WebCat have several fields which are linked. The Author Field links and the Library of Congress Subject Heading Fields links can be especially helpful. Clicking on a link will perform a search on that term in that field. This feature is especially good for finding books similar to one you may have already identified as useful to your research.
• Library of Congress Classification System -- an outline of the subject arrangement of books in the Osterlin Library.
• Periodicals -- Journals, magazines, etc. which the library owns, are listed with their complete holdings record in WebCat. This is not a way to find journal articles themselves. For a guide to finding journal articles, see How to find Journal Articles.
• Reference Books -- a special collection of books including encyclopedias, dictionaries, chronologies, atlases, and other sources of biographical, historical, and/or statistical information.
  • Reference Books are signified by the word Reference before the call number and are for use in the library only.
  • The best way to find a Reference Book in WebCat is by doing a search on a topic and then use the Limit Search button to limit the results of that search to the location of REFERENCE.
  • Library of Congress Classification System -- an outline of the subject arrangement of books in the Osterlin Library. You can browse these areas in the Reference Section in the Library.
  
  
  
• Searching techniques for WebCat --detailed help instructions
  • Decide which search terms you want to use -- keywords, browse, or exact.
    • keywords -- return records containing the word or words entered.
    • browse -- returns an alphabetical list of results, beginning with first word entered.
    • exact -- returns only results with the word or words exactly as you entered them. Use this if you know a specific title, or to narrow results of a subject search.
  • Type your search terms in the text box.
    • use the $ sign to search for plurals or varied endings of words, e.g. forest$ searches for forest, forests, and forestry, all at the same time.
    • use the ? mark to substitute letters in a search word, e.g. wom?n retrieves records showing both woman and women.
  • Click on the type of search you want executed.
    • search everything -- searches all the words in a record
    • author, title, subject, series -- searches only those particular parts of a record, using your search terms.
  • View records -- once your search has retrieved a list of catalog records, click on view to see the whole record with complete cataloging information. This is when you can use the "hotlinked headings" feature described above.
  • Limit results -- searches can be limited by year, item type, or location in the library. This can be especially useful if you are specifically looking for books published in the last 5 years, only media, or only specific types of books such as reference books or government documents.
  • Narrow or enlarge your searches by using Boolean logic -- using the word "or" between search words (dogs or cats) will generally increase the number of titles you retrieve; using the word "and" between search words (dogs and cats) will generally decrease the number of titles in your results list. Keep in mind that enlarging your results list does not necessarily increase the quality of those results.

For further, more advanced search techniques, visit the help page of WebCat, or ask one of the reference librarians for assistance.