Fuller instructions are in the online SCISWEB manual (new window) especially the chapter SCIS OPAC (new window 6.4M
).
The SCIS OPAC search screen provides two search facilities:
-
Basic Search - with the search options of title, author, subject, keyword and command used for simpler searches
with single chunks of information, such as title, ISBN, or author.
-
Guided Search - with a broad range of search fields and the boolean operators and, or, not.
allows for more precise searching compared to Basic Search. It offers keyword searching in
specific fields such as title, author, and publisher, or anywhere in the record.
In each search screen, Hints on how to search, with examples, are given. Basic Search Hints are found below the search box in the Basic Search screen.Guided Search Hints are found below the search boxes in the Guided Search screen. Read these Hints first before attempting the worksheet exercises.
General searching hints
- When doing title searches, drop initial articles (In English: a, an, the) at the beginning of the title. E.g. The harp in the south - enter as: harp in the south.
- In Basic search, title searches are left-anchored, i.e. the search words must start from the beginning of the title and be entered in the order in which they appear, including stop words (a, an, the) within the title. E.g. House on the hill.
- If you don't know the exact words in the title, use Guided Search for locating the title by entering keywords from the title, e.g. enter - house hill - in the Find box, choose all of these in the search criteria box, and choose title in the drop-down list from the In box, thus specifying the field of the record in which you wish the search terms to be found.
- Apostrophes can be left out in words or at the end of words.
- Hyphens in words must be included, or indicated by a blank space.
- Truncation searches in which the search term is shortened by removing some letters is available, but only after a stem, not within a stem or world. Use a question mark ? to truncate a search term - for e.g. computer? will retrieve all variations of the term - computers computerised computerized; genetic? will retrieve the variations genetics genitically.
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