Searching the book catalog
Butte College Library
Online Workshop Series
Searching the book catalog
How to search for books and e-books in the library catalog
In this presentation we will take a look at the Butte College Library's online book catalog. We'll discuss search techniques for finding books, eBooks, and course reserves from your instructor.
The Library has a collection of approximately 70,000 print books and 22,000 eBooks. This workshop will show you proper techniques for accessing the collection, both on-campus and off-campus.
Finding the library
From the Library home page, (http://www.butte.edu/library/), click on the left side link: 'Search for books and e-Books'
On the library's main page, there are a number of links that run down the left hand side of the page.
Here you will find links to our Interlibrary loan page, Web resources, location and hours, and more.
Today we're going to explore the "Search for books and eBooks" link.
If you are off-campus
For searching from an off-campus computer, click on the link: 'Off-campus Access'
If you are on campus and using one of the public computers in the library, you can simply click on the "Search for books and eBooks" link and this will take you into the library's catalog.
However, you may want to search our catalog from home or from some other off-campus location. You can easily do this by first clicking on the "Off-campus access" link before you do any searching.
Logging in from Off-campus
Enter your user name and password
To log-in from off-campus, follow the instructions on the page.
Your username is your last name plus the first two letters of your first name, without any spaces. Your password is the last four digits of your student ID Number if you are a student; or the last four digits of your Social Security Number if you are staff.
Searching the catalog
Now let's look at actually searching the catalog.
There are two main ways to search the catalog: simple and advanced. Let's look at a simple search first.
Simple search
In a simple search, you can search for books using keywords, author, title, subject, and more. Type one term into the search box, choose your search method, and click search.
In this example, we're using the word "sustainability" as a keyword.
Simple search
This screen displays the titles of the books returned for the "sustainability" search along with some information about each book, including where it is located, the call number so you can find it on the shelf, and whether the book is checked in or out.
If your search returned a lot of titles, you can sort them by title, author, publishing date, or relevance.
Advance to the next screen by clicking "next". Click on any title you are interested in for more details about that book.
Simple search
This detailed screen provides some more information about each book in your search. Clicking on the subject headings will take you to a list of similar subject headings, and clicking on the call number link will display books with similar call numbers, all relevant to your search.
Simple search
Let's go back to our simple search screen.
If your first search returned too many titles, you can narrow your simple search by adding a "+" [plus] sign to any additional terms you add. For example, "+sustainability +urban" searches for books containing both keywords.
Simple search
This narrows our previous search down to just 18 titles.
Simple search -- subject
If you want to search by subject, in a simple search the catalog will automatically take you to the subject headings that are similar to your search terms.
For example, let's try "sustainability" again, this time as a subject search
Simple search -- subject
In this example, the official name of the subject in the catalog is "sustainable", and here are all the related subjects with the word "sustainable".
Click on the highlighted number in the left column to see the list of titles under each subject.
Advanced search
Let's try an advanced, or "builder" search now, which allows you to customize your search further, with pull-down menus and Boolean operators.
Advanced search
Here we are searching for both "sustainable building" as well as "architecture".
The pull-down menus give you options for the words you are searching, as well as where to search.
Advanced search
This search returned 12 titles and the results screen works the same as it did in the simple search.
Click on any title for more details on the book.
Advanced search -- subject
Searching by subject in the advanced search mode is a bit different than in a simple search.
Here you must use the exact subject terms from our catalog.
Advanced search -- Subject
Here, the same subject search we did from our simple search only returned 2 titles in the advanced search.
Clicking on the title gives us more information about the book.
Advanced search -- Subject
Remember from our simple subject search when "sustainability" showed us the list of subject terms related to our search term?
An advanced subject search will only look for an exact match. So it's best to search for subjects in the "simple" search mode.
Searching the catalog -- e-Books
The library has over 22,000 eBooks available for students and faculty to read online. Let's briefly try searching for eBooks now. We've created a separate tutorial on searching eBooks, so here we'll just go over the basics.
Go to the "Search for books and e-Books" page. Then, we'll start our search by clicking on the NetLibrary link.
Searching NetLibrary -- e-Books
Just as in the Butte Library catalog, you can perform a basic or advanced search.
Type your terms into the search box and select where to search from the drop-down menu. Keep in mind that a "full-text" search will look for your search terms in the entire text of every book, so it's best to be as specific as possible when using the "full-text" feature.
Searching for e-Books
From your search results screen, choose "View this eBook" on the title you are interested in. This will bring up the entire book for viewing.
Viewing an e-Book
Here, on the left-hand column, you have the table of contents and on the right side is the first page of your book.
You can navigate through the book using the table of contents, or you can advance one page at a time using the "next" button in the upper right.
Viewing an e-Book
One important thing to remember is to always click on the "close item" button when you are finished with your eBook, or when you simply want to take a break from viewing it. Since only one person campus-wide can view a particular eBook at one time, you must "close item" after viewing it to avoid getting locked out of the book the next time you want to view it.
Searching the catalog -- e-Books
You can also access eBooks directly from the library's catalog. Remember our "+sustainability +urban" search?
eBooks are listed as "electronic resources" in our catalog. Click on the title of the book to access it.
Searching the catalog -- e-Books
From the item details screen, click on the URL address. This will take you directly to the NetLibrary page for this eBook.
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Searching Course Reserves
The final thing we will look at is searching for course reserves.
If your instructor has placed books on reserve for your class you can find them by searching the "Course Reserves" link.
Searching Course Reserves
Course reserves are textbooks, articles and other supplemental reading materials that instructors place on hold at the Library for students. These materials usually have a limited loan period to ensure availability to other students in the class.
You can search for course reserves either by instructor, department, OR course name.
Searching Course Reserves
The course reserves results page looks like any other catalog search page, and tells you the titles of the materials as well as where they are located. Materials will generally be held either at the Main library circulation desk or in Room 219 at the Chico Center.
Need more help?
ASK A Librarian!
Call the reference desk at 879-4024
Ask a librarian now! 24/7 help:
http://www.butte.edu/library/ > Ask a Librarian > Ask Now
Visit the Library in person
at Main or Chico Center (Room 219).
You have completed the online tutorial "Searching the Book Catalog"
