Searching Voyager:#2: Finding a Book by Its Title

Zale Library at Paul Quinn CollegeDavid Hamrick, 2012

“Now, voyager, sail thou forth to seek and find…” - Whitman

ENTERYOUR

SEARCHHERE

THIS CONTROLS THE TYPE

OF SEARCH

Keyword Anywhere AND with RelevanceKeyword Anywhere OR with RelevanceTitle Keyword ANDSubject Keyword ANDJournal Title Keyword ANDKeyword Relevance SearchAuthor BrowseLeft Anchored TitleCall Number BrowseSubject BrowseCommand Search with RelevanceDate Search (Left Anchored)Name Title Browse

THERE ARE MORE

THAN A DOZEN

DIFFERENT SEARCH

FLAVORS!

Keyword Anywhere AND with RelevanceTitle Keyword ANDLeft Anchored TitleAuthor BrowseSubject Keyword ANDSubject Browse

Most of your search needs will be met by just a few different flavors of searches.

Google search is really just keyword searching with relevancy ranking. The library catalog can be much more precise.

Finding a Book by Its Title

• This presentation covers 3 flavors of searching:• “Keyword Anywhere AND with Relevance”• “Title Keyword AND”• “Left Anchored Title”

• 3 best searches for locating a book by title

Keyword Anywhere, AND

• This is default search when you open Voyager• “Keyword Anywhere” means it will search for the

words anywhere they are used in Voyager:– In a title– In an author’s name– In information about the publisher– In subject headings– In any other notes in catalog records

• “AND” means it will only return records that have ALL of the keywords you enter

Suppose you are looking for the book Politics in America by Thomas J. Dye

You opened Voyager, typed inpolitics in america

and hit Enter.

politics in america

• Voyager checks its indexes for records with:– The word “politics” anywhere (1,830 records)– The word “in” anywhere (10,000+ records!)– The word “america” anywhere (1,845 records)

• Any records that turn up all three times are returned in your results display.

BOOLEAN “AND” SEARCH!

“politics” “america”

“in”

“politics”AND“in”AND

“america”

This brought in a lot of results: more than 130 items!

Relevancy ranking brought our book close to the top… but there are better ways to search.

Our search terms are still in this bar above the results.

Let’s change the search from “Keyword Anywhere AND” to “Title Anywhere AND.”

CLICKHERE

Title Anywhere, AND

• “Title Anywhere” means it will search for your keywords only in titles

• “AND” means it will only return records that have ALL of your keywords in the title

• The process is the same as before, just narrowed down:– “politics” (found in 606 titles)– “in” (found in 9,722 titles)– “america” (found in 1,061 titles)

“politics” “america”

“in”

“politics”AND“in”AND

“america”

This gave us just 34 hits, a lot better than 140! But without relevancy ranking, it still didn’t bring our book to the top.

Let’s change the search from “Title Keyword AND” to “Left Anchored Title.”

CLICKHERE

Left Anchored Title

• Treats the search as a phrase, not as keywords• Looks for “politics in america” in exactly that

order• Similar to using quotes in a Google search• You can also use quotes that way in Voyager

• “Left anchored” means:• Voyager looks for this exact phrase…• But only at the “left end” (beginning) of the title• Google search doesn’t do that!

This is what we were looking for! Only 7 results to go through. 6 of

them are Politics in America by Dye. (We have six different editions.)

For finding a book by its title:

• “Keyword Anywhere AND” search is default• This search works fairly well because it has

relevancy ranking• If you only know some words of the title,

“Title Keyword AND” can be a good search• If you know the exact title, “Left Anchored

Title” is the fastest way to what you want

END