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| General remarks | |
- Note that due to differences between the available catalogues, certain search types may not function with individual target systems (see below).
Upper and lower-case letters
These do not need to be considered in the search entry.
- Umlauts
Umlauts may be entered as ä ...., as well as ae, oe ... , and not as a, o, u
- Boolean Operators
Default for connecting search fields is AND. This is also the default within a single search field.
The explicit use of operators AND and OR is possible. Within the title field, it should be possible to perform a phrase search using quotation marks (“”).
- Truncation
If you do not know the exact spelling of a search term, or if you are looking for several word forms, then it is possible to truncate by using the question mark. The truncation replaces one or several letters. Example: ‘restaur?’ searches for ‘restaurieren’, ‘restaure’, ‘restaurator’, ‘Restauratoren’, ‘restauration’ etc. The author field is always truncated automatically. In the search field ‘year’ truncation is not possible.
Attention: Some target systems currently do not support truncation at all or just for certain fields.
- Search results
For each target system, a hit list is produced. These hit lists show up to 30 short titles as a short title list; the existence of additional hits is mentioned. Mouse-clicking on a short title information or on "more matches” means switching over to the full information within the target system. This information is displayed in a new window. The target system’s interface allows to derive further benefit from that system's complete features, for example: additional retrieval options, contents information, lending, interlibrary loan, or document delivery.
You may make a print-out of the search results by clicking on the pertinent button.
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- All fields
This is a general keywords search taking into account all kinds of search fields, especially: title keyword, author, institution, subject heading, publisher / place of publication, if possible also: ISBN/ISSN and year of publication as well as additional information as footnotes, abstracts, contents notes for archival materials etc. ISBN/ISSN are automatically identified. Four digit numbers numbers corresponding to years will automatically be interpreted as publication year. The system will retrieve all records which contain all of the terms for which you are searching (Boolean operator AND automatically applied), regardless of the order of their appearance.
The target Library of the University of Applied Sciences, Cologne, does not support this field
The target Union Catalogue Florence-Munich-Rome uses also results produced by MILOS, a program for automatic indexing which also makes selections using variations of spelling and synonyms for the specified term.
- Title keyword
A title keyword is defined as a single element of a title of a work or a title of a series. Only significant words should be chosen, the order does not matter. So-called stopwords like ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘the’ are normally not searchable. Single terms are combined automatically using the Boolean AND operator. If you do not know the exact spelling of a keyword, or if you wish to search for several word forms, you may truncate after a specific string of words. The title field normally also supports including a “phrase” in quotation marks. See above under Boolean Operators.
According to the nature of the individual target systems, the title field may take into account keywords from footnotes, contents notes etc.
- Author
The search field ‘Author’ allows searching for publications of an author or secondary author such as editor, compiler, artist, illustrator and translator. Authors of reviews and authors of reviewed publications may also be retrieved where applicable (especially in the Union Catalog Florence-Munich-Rome). This search field only accepts the name of one person. Use last name, then comma and blank, then first name.
Example: ‘Zimmermann, Hans’. This search mode uses automatic truncation, thus ‘Zimmermann, Hans’, will also retrieve ‘Zimmermann, Hans Peter’, ‘Zimmermann, Hansjörg’ etc.
Be careful when searching for names like ,Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von’ or ‚Os, Henk van’: Depending on the cataloguing rules, particles like ‚von’, ‚van’ etc. are differently indexed or not taken into account at all. This applies also the the ‘All fields’ search (see above).
- Subject Heading
Subject headings are terms thematically caracterizing the contents of a publication (so-called subject indexing). In most cases, these terms, if they exist at all, are chosen from a thesaurus or thesaurus-like vocabulary. In Germany, this is mosten often the “Schlagwortnormdatei” (SWD). In many cases, subject headings are in the singular, but there are exceptions. Single terms are combined automatically using the Boolean AND operator. If you do not know the exact spelling of a subject heading, or if you wish to search for several word forms, you may truncate after a specific string of words. Due to the differences of the target systems, different indexing languages or partial lack of subject indexing, using this search field for a simultanous retrieval in all targets is so far not useful in many cases. We then recommend that you restrict yourself to certain types of catalogues (e.g. only German, only French, only English targets) or that you repeat your search using the same term in different languages. However, subject searches may function reasonably well especially with individual names. Normally, the websites of the target systems will contain informations on the type of subject indexing provided and its extent.
- Institution
Here, you may search for institutions or corporate authors, where applicable also places of exhibitions etc. Corporate authors may be entities as associations of persons, institutions, organizations and events, and also states, countries, communes and their related ministries, parliaments, administrations etc.
All meaningful keywords of corporate names should be searchable, in any order.
Attention: Some target systems (Gulbenkian and Getty) do not support this field. Other targets, especially anglo-american systems, use it for broader contents like all kinds of individual names.
When searching for auction houses, please use also the fields ‘title’ or ‘all fields’, where the ‘institution’ fieldis not producing satisfying results.
- Year
You may limit your search by the publication year. Always enter four digits (ex. ‘1998’, not ‘98)’. This fields needs to be combined with at least one of the other search categories, such as author or title etc.
Attention: This field is not taken into account by the target ART-Guide.
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ISBN / ISSN
You may search for publications with their International Standard Book Number resp. the International Standard Serial Number.
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Publisher
In this field you may search publications by their publisher and most often also by their place of publication.
If you don’t know the exact name or spelling or if you want to search several word forms within a search, then you have the possibility of truncation.
Example: 'Akad?' also finds 'Akad. Dr.-u.Verl.-Anst.', 'Akademie-Verlag'
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