USING THE VOYAGER ONLINE CATALOG

 

A library catalog is a list of the items held by the library that have been classified, indexed, and arranged. The Voyager Catalog at CSUB lists the holdings in the various collections in Stiern Library. These holdings include books, periodicals, audio and video tapes and discs, and microforms.
When you open the Voyager library catalog, you are taken to the Guided Search screen. This allows you to perform a keyword search.

You should use the Guided Search screen when you are looking for materials on a general topic (unknown items).  When you are looking for a specific title or author (known items), you should use the Author/Title Search screen.

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Which screen would be best used for finding the novel Of Mice and Men? Books about writing term papers? Books about the Mexican Revolution?   Books by John Steinbeck?

To determine which screen you should use, you should ask yourself whether you are looking for a specific item or researching a topic. 

The Guided Search for general topics

 1- Type in your search terms.   catagories
2- Select the type of search you want to run. "Any of these" will find either word in a record.  "All of these" will find only records that have both words. "As a phrase" will find records only when both words are together in a phrase.  catagories
 

3- Select which fields within the record you want to search. Normally you want to search either the "entire record," the "title and subject" or the "subject" alone for your topic, depending on how narrowly focused you want your search to be.

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4- Press "search now."

 

Common Mistakes

1- You can't combine terms on a single line using AND or OR.  If you want to combine more than one term using AND or OR, type each term in a separate box.

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2- You can't find a title that contains the word AND or OR, unless you search as a phrase.

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Author/Title Search 

The Author/Title search is a misnomer.  In addition to allowing you to search by title or author, this screen allows you to search for call numbers, journal titles, Library of Congress subject headings, and to perform complex command line searches.  

Enter a title.  Exclude the first article (the, a or an) of any title.

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Enter an author.  

Note the truncation symbol (?) after the letter.  By truncating you are telling the computer you wantit to find any word that begins with that letter.  If you add a question mark after alex (alex?), you find all
authors that with those four letters (alexander, alexandre or alexandria). You can truncate any word on in any search either screen.  This is particularly useful if you are unsure of a spelling.

 

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When searching for a call number, you have to enter the spaces exactly as they appear on the book.

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Curt Asher                                                                                                                           Copyright California State University Bakersfield, 2005