If so, the record of your transaction has been lost, due to our computer failure that happened on Thursday, December 30th. This means that if you placed a hold, checked out an item, returned an item, paid a fine, got a library card, etc. we do not have a record of that transaction, if it happened on December 29th.

For details of what to do, please visit our page explaining what happened and what we’re doing to rectify the situation.

As always, we thank you for your patience as we wade through the fall-out of the server failure last week. We hope that 2011 can only get better from here on out.

Posted by Lisa, a second floor librarian

Card Catalog? by OSU Archives, on Flickr

This is a follow-up post to an earlier one I wrote a few weeks ago.

Some of our readers suggested a post explaining how to limit the search to a certain format, so that they can see what’s available as a Playaway, for example.

Hopefully after reading this post, you’ll be able to limit your search to the type of format you’re interested in.

So let’s say you’re interested in Playaways or large print books, or video games. The Set Limits box on the search screen is your friend.

When you click on Set Limits, a new window will pop up with your choices.

The Collection box is where you’ll want to look for the limiter that suits your needs. In the case of Playaways (a brand name), the catalog uses the term Pre-loaded Audio. Select that, click OK, and your search will be limited to Playaways for adults (vs. Playaways for kids).

Once you click OK, it takes you back to the search screen. You’ll know limits are in effect because the Set Limits button has now changed to say Change Limits.

So, if you are looking to browse our holdings in a certain format, be warned that you will have a lot of titles to scroll through (hundreds and hundreds). So it’s good to narrow your search a bit. For example, are you interested in mysteries? Search mystery fiction as a keyword. Or biographies? Use the word biography. Just fiction? Use fiction.

Once you get your long list of results to scroll through, you might find it helpful to use our sorting options. These often get overlooked, but they’re really helpful.

I ran a search for mystery fiction with the limit set to Adult pre-loaded audio. This netted me 84 titles. You can then sort the results in different ways. If you choose to sort by Availability (circled in green), you will get items that are on the shelf and ready for check-out at the top of the list. This is a great option to use if you want something you can take home now.

Another option would be to sort by publication date. This would put the newest items to the top of the list.

I hope this helps clarify searching by format in our catalog. If it doesn’t, or there are other catalog questions you’d like to see addressed, leave us a comment! The sort of feedback we get determines what sort of posts we write. You might also want to check out Sharon’s post on using the catalog to see what new titles have arrived recently.

Posted by Lisa, a second floor librarian

Card Catalog? by OSU Archives, on Flickr

A common complaint that we get at the desk on the second floor is about our catalog. People often say they aren’t able to find what they’re looking for.

Library catalogs are designed to, amongst other things, support fairly complicated searches by library staff. This can mean that the average user gets stymied.

So until the library world develops catalogs that are easier to use (if only we had the resources of Amazon or Google), here are some tricks to help you get what you want, faster.

It seems like a great deal of our library users are looking for a particular title or author when searching the catalog. If you know the exact title or author you are looking for, the easiest and fastest way to get there is through the magic of Starts With.

The default search in our catalog is Keyword. But if you click on the Starts With tab, you might have more luck when looking for a specific title.

Once you’ve clicked the Starts With tab, you’ll see the search screen gets simpler. Let’s say you want to find Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel. (A great book, by the way, I’m reading it right now.)

Just enter Wolf Hall in the search box (capitalization doesn’t matter), and you’ll see that the listing you want comes right to the top.

Search:

Result:

You get this targeted result because using Starts With means that you’re searching the catalog alphabetically, kind of like with the old-school card catalog in the picture at the beginning of the post.

This works great with authors too, when you know exactly what you’re looking for. Say you want to see what other books Hilary Mantel has written. Stick with the Starts With search, but change it to Author instead of Title.

Make sure you enter the author last name first (commas or capitalization don’t matter), and you’re good to go. Hilary Mantel is right at the top of the results screen.

I hope this helps take some of the frustration out of searching our catalog.

If you’re interested in seeing more blog posts like this, I would be happy to do a series of posts on using the catalog. What sort of things do you have trouble finding? Leave a comment and I’ll write a post addressing your questions.

Of course, we’re always happy to give you search tips in person, on the phone, via chat or email. Just ask!

Frustration! by basykes, on Flickr

Why does the library have only one copy of (insert super-popular book title here)?!?

This is a very common question/complaint we get from you, our library users.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. You hear about a new book, say Game Change, by John Heilemann. You search the library’s catalog, and see that apparently we only have only one (1!) copy of the book, when there are fifty-two (52!) holds on it. ARGH!

But don’t fear, library users.  We are more on top of things than our online system shows. Though the public view of the system only shows one copy of that book, we actually have ten additional copies on order.

We run regular reports to find out which titles need additional copies ordered to maintain our holds-to-copies ratio for books. We order additional copies as needed, and when these books arrive, they are prioritized for getting processed and added to the system, filling all those hold requests (in order).

Unfortunately, our online system does not display the additional copies on order, so it can look quite discouraging if you’re number 52 in the holds queue for Game Change.

I hope this helps explain a little bit about what we do here and reassures all of you readers on hold for those books with huge hold queues.

If you ever want to give us feedback about something here at the library, just contact us.

Posted by Lisa, a second floor librarian