Catalog Searching Tips

The Encore catalog is your guide to the riches held in the Elmhurst Public Library collection. Encore will reward you with quick results to a simple keyword search, but there are many advanced ways to mine down to exactly what you are searching for, including searching by title, author, and subject, or refining your results using sorting, limits, and subject headings. You can also expand your searches by using tags and reading recommendations.

 

Basic Search:

There are two ways to begin using EPL’s Encore catalog.

1. When you are inside the Library, using one of our dedicated catalog stations, you will begin using the catalog from our “landing page.” When starting on the Library’s website, you access the landing page by clicking on the word “catalog” at the top right of the Library’s home page. The landing page allows you to:

• search by keyword, author, title, or subject
• limit your search by format
• limit your results to items that are currently available at the Library
• search the whole collection, or just the adult, kids, teen, AV, or new collections

2. From the Library’s website, you can also begin a quick keyword search by entering your search term(s) into the search box at the very top right of the home page, and then clicking “Find It!”

The keyword search box allows you to enter a keyword, or keywords, as you would in a search engine such as Google.

The Boolean operator “and” will automatically (and invisibly) be placed between your keywords, so all of them will be included in your search results. There is no need for you to put “and” between terms in your keyword search. However, use “and” in any phrase or title that normally includes the word “and,” such as “above and beyond” or “Frog and Toad Are Friends.” If you want to search a phrase, place quotation marks around the words in your phrase, so they will be searched together, in that order, as a phrase. For example, “brown bears” will result in fewer, more exact hits than the two words without the quotation marks.

If you want to exclude a word from your search results, place a minus sign before that word. For example, bears –Chicago.

When you execute a keyword search, Encore will look for your search terms in several different fields, including author, title, series title, summary, subject headings, and tags. If you want to search variations of a word, you can use an asterisk (*) to substitute for missing letters or various endings of a base word. For example, drug* with return hits containing the words drug, drugs, and druggist, and searching for g*se with return hits containing the words goose and geese.

SORTING

When Encore returns a list of results, the records are displayed in relevancy order, from the most relevant (those that most closely match your search terms) to the least. You can change the order in which records are displayed by clicking on the word “title” at the top left of the page to sort alphabetically by title, or the word “date” to sort by publication date, newest to oldest.

LIMITS

Once Encore returns a list of results, you can refine the list by clicking on the facets on the left side of the results screen.

Availability will limit your search results to items that are on shelf in the Library, and will hide items that are checked out.

Found in allows you to specify that you only want to see items that contain your search term(s) in the title, subject, or author fields of the records.

Format allows you to limit to a specific format, such as book, dvd, compact disc, etc. The format list may contain more choices than are displayed. Click more to see the entire list.

Collection allows you to limit your search results to items found in the adult collection, or the kids’ collection, or the teen collection, or to limit your search results to multimedia formats, or to limit your results to materials that are shelved on our new materials shelves.

Language allows you to limit your search results to materials published in English, or in a another language. There may be more languages represented than display on your results page; click more to see the entire list.

Tag offers a list of related keywords that you can use to find additional items in our collection.

Publish Date allows you to limit your results to items that were published during a specific year. To limit by a range of publishing dates, use the Advanced Search form.

Place allows you to limit your results to items that are about, or take place in, or are published in a certain city, state, or country. The place name comes from subject headings, tags, and other fields in the catalog records. Don’t forget to click on more to see the complete list.

RELATED SEARCHES

Related searches offer related terms that you can use to find additional items in our collection.

Established Terms were chosen by librarians to ensure consistency in organizing materials. For example, if you search for works about couches, you might not find the all the relevant resources. Library catalogers chose the word “Sofas” to uniformly represent all related terms, such as “couches,” “divans,” and “davenports.” Click on one of the Established Terms to conduct a search using the Library’s authoritative classification terms.

Additional Suggestions are like tags, and they offer more keywords that might help you find exactly what you are looking for.

Tip: Once you choose a facet, or limiter, the other facets will disappear from the display on the left side of the page. To bring those invisible facets back, click on the little circle with an “x” in it that is shown next to your chosen limiter.

CAN’T FIND IT?

If you can’t find what you are looking for, you can check the collections of our partner libraries by clicking on the green box that says “LINKin: Search Partner Libraries.” This box is found on the side of the page under the heading “Other Sources.” If you find what you are looking for in the LINKin catalog, you can place a request directly in the LINKin catalog, and you will be notified when the item is ready for you to pick up at the Elmhurst Public Library.

To request something that EPL does not own, and is not available from LINKin, simply click on the words “Request it here” at the top right of the page, and tell us what you’d like. We will either buy the item, or borrow it from another library, and we will contact you when the item is ready for you to pick up. Or, simply speak to an EPL librarian. We’d be happy to help you find what you’re looking for.

Advanced Search:

The Advanced Search form allows you to combine many different requirements into your search. For example, you could look for the subject “Paris” and format “dvd” and language “French” and publication dates “2009 -2014” all in one step.

To find the Advanced Search form, click on the words “Advanced Search” under the search box. Fill in one or more of the search boxes. You can choose to designate each search term as a keyword, an author, a title, or a subject, using the drop-down menu at the left of the search box. It is not necessary to fill in all of the boxes in the Advanced Search form.

Combining two or more search terms with the Boolean operator AND will result in hits that have all of your search terms present in each record.

You can also look for two different search terms at once, without combining them, by using the Boolean operator “OR.” For example, searching for bears AND wolves will result in hits for materials that include both bears and wolves in one book or item. Searching for bears OR wolves will result in a list of materials that include both bears and wolves, but also items only on bears and other items that are only on wolves.

You can exclude a search term by using the Boolean operator “NOT” – for example, bears NOT Chicago.

You can use a call number as a search term. For example, if you are looking for beginning readers, put “J B” into one of the search boxes. If you are looking for picture storybooks for young children, put “J E” into one of the search boxes.

If you want to use more than three search boxes, click the plus sign to the right of one of the boxes. Once you have filled the form with your search terms, you can designate a format, a language, a collection, and a range of publication dates. Again, you do not need to fill in all of these boxes, only the ones you wish to use. If you want to look for more than one format, click the plus sign to the right of the format box. You can also search for more than one language and in more than one collection.

Limits of the same type are treated as OR terms. If you enter two format limits, such as one for “books” and one for “maps,” Encore searches for books OR maps, resulting is a list that includes both books and maps.

Limits of different types are treated as AND terms. If you enter a format of “books” and a language of “Spanish,” Encore searches for books written in Spanish.

Reading Your Results:

Once you have a list of results, it’s time to examine the ones that look interesting to you. From the initial list of brief records, you can see the total number of results returned displayed at the top left of the page, just under the search box.

Looking at the brief records, you see for each the title, author, format, and publication date. You may also see a picture of the cover, a call number, and whether or not the item is ON SHELF or checked out (in which case the DUE date is displayed). You will also see a red check mark, and the words, “Place a hold.” Click here to reserve this item.

Tip: Don’t place a hold on items that are ON SHELF if you intend to pick up those items soon (that day or the next). Rather, call the Library and ask a staff member to pull the items from the shelves and hold them for you.

For more information on an individual item, click on the title to expand the display from a brief record to a full record. In addition to the author, title, etc. that you see in a brief record, you will see a list of all the copies of this item owned by the Library, and a physical description of the item that includes number of pages and size. You may see a summary of the book or item, and you may see a list of subject headings. The author’s name and the subject headings are searchable, and when clicked will bring up a list of other items with the same author or subject headings.

If the book or item is part of a series, you may see a display of the covers of all of the books/items in the series – in order, which can be very useful. Clicking on the title below the cover will bring up the record for that title.

Reviews and Recommendations:

Many of the books and items in the Encore catalog come with recommendations of other titles, in the section headed “You Might Also Like These…” These recommendations come from a service called NoveList, and can lead to a wealth of similar or related titles. (Of course, in our humble opinion, the best way to get the “just right” reading recommendation is to ask an EPL librarian!)

The Elmhurst Public Library may or may not own the titles recommended by NoveList. Clicking on the titles below the covers will bring up the records for the items that EPL does own. If a title is not owned by EPL, you can check our partner libraries by clicking on the green box that says “LINKin: Search Partner Libraries.” This box is found on the side of the page under the heading “Other Sources.” If you find what you are looking for in the LINKin catalog, you can place a request directly in the LINKin catalog, and you will be notified when the item is ready for you to pick up at the Elmhurst Public Library.

To request a title that EPL does not own, and is not available from LINKin, simply click on the words “Request it here” at the top right of the page, and tell us what you’d like. We will either buy the item, or borrow it from another library, and we will contact you when the item is ready for you to pick up. Or, simply speak to an EPL librarian. We’d be happy to help you find what you’re looking for.

Other eResources from Your Library that May be Useful: Near the bottom of the item’s record are links to NoveList, a database of reading recommendations and “read-alikes,” and Goodreads, a social network for readers. By logging on to Goodreads, you can keep a log of your reading, write reviews, and connect with your fellow readers.Reviews of the title, reading level, and awards won by that title may be listed near the bottom of the page. Unfortunately, the reading level is not indexed, so you can’t search for books by reading level. If you need books on a particular reading level, ask an EPL librarian at the Kids’ Library Help Desk.