To find materials like books, DVDs and magazines available in the Library use our online catalog, WebVoyage. Searching is simple. Here are some tips to get you started.
Basic Searching : Advanced Searching : My Account
Just type your keyword in the “Search:” box then hit the “Search” button. This means that WebVoyage will look for your keyword in all fields, including the title, author, and subject. It will even search in fields like the publisher and format. This is a great way to start.
If you want to narrow your search a bit, you can use the “within” drop-down menu to limit the search to only a specific field. For example, if you are looking for a book of which you know the title, you can type the title into the “Search:” and then use the drop-down menu to select “Title.” You can limit a search to the title, subject, journal title, author, ISBN, or call number. Be careful using the “Subject” limit. If you don’t have the exact terminology used by the catalog, you may not get results. Instead try searching in “All Fields.”
You can also use the tabs along the top to quickly limit to “Subject” and “Author” searches.
If you are looking for a specific phrase, like global warming, use quotes to search it as a phrase. "global warming" will search for those words together, not individually.
If you are looking for a words that can show up in multiple forms, like child or children, use ? to truncate. Child? will return both words with one search.
The basic search allows you to quickly search the catalog, but the Advanced Search is much more powerful and allows you to really refine your search. Here are some tips for using it.
In the Advanced Search there are three Search boxes. Between each search box you’ll see a drop-down menu that reads “AND.” When you pull this menu down you can select one of three operators: AND, OR, NOT. An operator lets you control how the computer searches for multiple terms.
AND tells the catalog that all terms in your search must be present in the results. For example, you are searching for photographs of landscapes. Try searching for “landscapes” AND “photography.” You will only get items that have BOTH “landscapes” and “photography” somewhere in the record. AND makes a search more specific. The catalog will automatically use the AND operator if you do not specify otherwise.
When you select OR, only one of the search terms you specified must be in the results. Using the example above, searching for “landscapes” OR “photography,” returns items that have EITHER “landscapes” or “photography” somewhere in the record. You will get any item that has the term “photography” in the record. You will ALSO get any item that has the term “landscapes” in it. Use OR when you want to expand your search, as with synonyms.
NOT is the hardest operator to use. When you select not, the second search term cannot be in the records. Using our example above, you need to find information about landscape painting. When you use the search term “landscapes,” you get a lot of results about landscape photography. Changing your search to “landscapes” NOT ”photography” will EXCLUDE any item with the term “photography” in it. NOT can be difficult to use and can exclude a lot of applicable results. For example, any book about the history of landscapes that included a chapter on photography would be excluded.
You’ll notice a number of other options, but some of them may make your search more confusing. Below are explanations for ones that may be helpful.
Year
If you researching a time-sensitive topic and you only want results published recently you can use the year limiter. Just select the drop-down menu and choose either “Last Five Years” or “Last Ten Years” for items published in the last five or ten years. You can also select “From…To” to specify a date range. For example you are looking for books on global warming and only want items published in the last two years, Type in From: 1/1/2008 To: 6/21/2010.
Type/Format
Type and format work together to allow you to limit your results to specific media. Use Type to limit to only Books or Serials. Use Format to limit to only videorecordings or sound recordings.
Language
You can use language to limit results to a specific language.
Voyager offers a number of self-service features from its online catalog. To get started just click on the “My Account” tab. You will now need to login.
You barcode is simply your ID number with a prefix.
Now just enter your Last Name and hit the “Log In” button. Congratulations! This is the hardest part.
Once you’ve logged in you will see a list of any items checked out to your account. To renew them all, just check the box next to “Select All:” or you can select specific items to renew by checking the box next to the individual items. Once you have selected your items, just click “Request Renewal” to renew them.
From the “My Account” screen you can also update your information and “Edit Preferences.”
The catalog also allows you to create a list of items which you can revisit at a later date. Once you have a found an item in which you are interested, use the Actions menu to save it to a list. Just click the “Add to My List” link. You can review the items on your list by clicking on the “My List” tab. From this page you can print, export, or delete titles.
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