Central Oregon
Community College
LIBRARY 127
 USING ONLINE CATALOGS TO LOCATE BOOKS

The COCC Online Catalog provides access to books, electronic books and videos/DVDs in the COCC Library.  It also lists which journals, magazines, and newspapers we have, but does not let you search for articles on specific topics.   

The catalog does let you search by author, title, subject heading, keyword and call number. 

In each case, you perform a search, then the catalog gives you a list of items that match your search. 

You click on the items you are interested in, and then see a screen that gives you the information you need to find the book, including the call number. 

All library online catalogs work in this way.  Once you have the call number, of course, it's your job to go find the book, which will usually be located on the COCC Library's second floor.  Pretty straightforward, right? 

It  is straightforward, except that some searching techniques can be a little complex and sophisticated.  We'll start with the easy stuff first.

To start, connect to the COCC Library.  You can also get to this page from the COCC homepage--just click on the link for "LIBRARY".

Once you are at the Library homepage, look for the the pull down menu that looks like this:

 You will then see  options for  the COCC online catalog, OSU's online catalog,  SUMMIT (a consortial catalog of  Northwest college and university libraries), and WorldCAT (a single database providing access to the world's online catalogs).  You'll also see links to our collection of e-books (NetLibrary) and a link to the Deschutes Public Library.

Choose the COCC Online Catalog then click on .  You will see our shared COCC/OSU Cascades catalog.

Take a close look at the search screen below--see how you can choose what kind of search you'd like to perform? Click on the kind of search you want, then type your search words (depending on what kind of search you're doing).  More on that below!

If you are doing a title search...

Click on the title option.  When you search for a book title, you usually know the title, or at least the first part of it. If you wanted to see whether the COCC Library had the book "Indians of Southwestern Oregon" you would probably get away with just typing

Indians of Southwestern

Go back to the COCC/OSU Cascades catalog. now and try searching for the title Indians of Southwestern Oregon.

If you are doing an author search...

Click on the author option.  To search by an author's name, you just need to click on author. The online catalog will then give you a screen that has a blank in which you type the author's name. You then press return, and the catalog will (we hope) provide you with a list of books written by that author. Go to the COCC Library Catalog and try searching for the author Raymond Hatton. You have to type in the last name first. If you don't know the first name of an author, you can skip it--you don't have to type it in. You can also type in the names of artists and composers, government bodies, or the names of organizations, for example: American Medical Association.

If you are doing a keyword search...

Click on the keyword option.  Keyword searching means that you search the online catalog using words that you think might appear anywhere in the title, subject headings, contents notes, or organization name for the book.

Let's say you were looking for books on "adolescents". One keyword, of course, would be "adolescents". Another keyword might be "teenagers". When you do keyword searching, it's wise to use your imagination. Try to imagine which words are most likely to appear in a title or subject for a book. Try making up your own book titles for the topic you are researching. Which keywords appear in your made-up titles? Those might be good words to use in your search on the online catalog!

Think of the most descriptive, most important words (that's why they are called key words) possible.  For example: if your topic is "history of the papacy", then your keywords are history and papacy.  Leave out words such as "the", "a", etc.  NOTE: I talk a LOT more about keyword searching in the next reading for this week!

If you are doing a subject heading search...

Click on the subject heading option.  The subject headings do not let you search for your topic willy nilly--they are instead the Library of Congress' filing system for the library and consist of a four volume list of controlled language--or official filing terms--located adjacent to the COCC reference desk. You pretty much have to know the official subject heading in order to have a subject heading search work effectively.  We're going to learn more (more than you'll ever want to know!) about subject headings and controlled language in Week Four.

Two more things!

You can click on the

  Journal/Magazine/Newspaper Title

option if you want to see if we have a certain journal, magazine or newspaper (but note that this does not let you look for articles--more on that in Week Five!

Also, you can click on the

Audio & Video

option in order to limit your search to our video/audio/dvd collection.