E-MAIL ORIENTATION TO LIBRARY RESOURCES
***DATE*** 
The Online Catalog (LOLA)

Thank you for signing up for our email orientation of electronic 
library resources. All of the resources I will cover are available 
through the library's web page, at http://www.lib.lsu.edu 

*************************

This email message covers our online catalog (LOLA).  We will have
this online catalog until this Spring when we will be getting a
more up-to-date system.  The new system will be able to perform
the same sort of searches that are described below, and will funtion
with more up-to-date technology.  For further information on the
new system, see http://www.lib.lsu.edu/SIRSI.html

**************************

Description: 

LOLA  is our OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog). Use it to find out 
what periodicals, books, music scores, government documents, CD-ROMS, 
and Internet resources are owned by the library. 

LOLA  is part of LOUIS, a large computer network made up of the 
library catalogs from many universities across the state, such
as UNO, Southeastern, and Nicholls State. You can access any of these 
library catalogs through the LOUIS system. 

**************************

Access:

There are several ways to access LOLA; in this e-mail we will focus 
on two methods that are readily available on most computers. The 
web-pac version is easy to access through any Internet connection. 
However, this method can be very slow and unreliable. Also, searching 
is limited to rather simple searching only: author, title, subject 
or keyword. For more complex searching I suggest using Host on Demand. 
*NOTE* our new system will eliminate the need for more than one 
interface.

I. Web-pac

The web-pac is the interface available through any web connection; 
no software or javascript is necessary to use it. Simply access the 
web-pac through http://www.lsu.edu/webpac-bin/wgbroker?new+-access+top 
using the Internet. Or, from the Libary's home page, click on "Access 
LOLA Remotely."

II. Host on Demand 

To access the Host on Demand interface, which emulates the version 
available in the library, you must have a java-capable browser and 
have javascripting enabled. If you need further instructions on how 
to enable java, please contact me directly. 

1. Go to the library's home page at http://www.lib.lsu.edu.
2. Click on "More LOLA access options"
3. Wait for the applet to load and present the entry form (this may 
	take a while on some computers)
4. If you get any Java security alerts, you can click GRANT to 
	allow the function to activate.
5. For Destination Address, type: ***. You do not need to fill out 
	any other fields.
6. Press the CONNECT button near the bottom of the page.
7. Scroll down to the bottom of the screen and click on Connect to Host.

Once you have done this, your computer will remember most of these 
steps for you.

After you've followed these steps, you should be looking at the 
LOUIS start screen. Once you reach this screen, searching will be 
fast and easy. Since the LOUIS system is actually links the catalogs 
of several different universities, the first thing the system wants 
to know is "What catalog would you like to search?" 

To get into the LSU online catalog, type in LSU and hit enter. If 
you want to search the catalog of another university, find its name 
on the menu and type in the designation code next to it. For 
instance, UNO is CAT6. 

**************************

General Search Techniques: 

I. Search techniques for the Host on Demand interface 

Readers can locate materials in at least four ways: by author, by 
title, by call number, by subject. Online catalogs like LOLA also 
allow readers to find materials by date, by publisher, by language, 
by format (for example, by allowing books to be separated from 
CD-ROMs). 

There are several ways to search the online catalog, such as: 

To search by author name, use a= 
To search by the title of the work, use t= 
To search by the subject of the work, use s= 
To search by keywords in the record, use k= 

If the title is very lengthy, just type the first four or five words, 
which should get you close enough. If the title begins with a definite 
article, like "the" or "a" then drop the article. This also applies 
to foreign titles, such as "Le Monde" (omit "le"). The online catalog
 is not case sensitive. 

Once you type in your search (t=Tale of Two Cities, for example), 
hit enter, and you will get a list of library items that match your 
search. Choose the number of the item for which you would like to 
see more information, and hit enter again. 

You will then see an item record which will show you which library 
the item is in (***, ***, etc.), its call number, and whether the 
item is on the shelf or checked out.


You can see more of the record by typing LON, for long; you can get 
back to the list of items by typing IND for Index; you can get back 
to the start screen at any time by typing STA. All of these options 
appear at the foot of the screen, along with some additional options. 

II. Search techniques for the web-pac 

Using the web-pac, searching is a little bit different. Instead of 
typing t=, click on the button next to "title," type in the title 
you wish to search where is prompts you, then click on the "Submit 
Search" button. 

The list you retrieve after clicking on Submit includes the call 
number, location, and informs you whether the book is on the shelf. 
There is no need to click on the title to see the long view unless 
you wish to see details such as the publisher or how many pages 
it has. 

Searching in the web-pac is easy for basic searches, but it does 
not allow some of the more advanced searching that the Host on 
Demand interface allows. 

**************************

Special Search Tips (for the Host on Demand Interface): 

A keyword search is the only type of search in which you may use Boolean 
operators (AND, OR, NOT) to combine search terms, or "superlabels." 
Superlabels are special endings and terms you can use to search 
specific parts of the records in the online catalog. 

Here are some common superlabels: 

word.au. Look for word as part of an author's name.
word.ti. Look for word in the title.
word.su. Look for word in the subject.
s.fmt. Look for a serial publication (a magazine or newspaper)
b.fmt. Look for anything in book format
(first three letters of language).lng. Search for an item in a 
	specific language 

Use Superlabels in a keyword search to combine searches. For example, 
if you know the author's last name is Smith, and a word in the title 
of the book is "psychology," you can combine these searches. To do 
so, you would type: 

K=Smith.au. and Psychology.ti. 

Remember that superlabels have a period before and after them. 

The keyword search is also the only search that allows truncation. 
You can type in the beginning of a word, then a question mark, and 
will with search for any words beginning with the letters you typed. 

For example, typing k=chem? will bring up records with the words 
chemistry, chemical, chemotherapy, etc. 

One of the most frequently asked reference questions at the reference 
desk is: "How can I find out if you have periodical X, or issue Y of 
periodical X?" 

You must look up periodicals by their full titles (not abbreviations). 
The record for the title of a book in *** is followed by a 
publication date, but the title of a periodical is followed by the 
word "serial." This is how you can tell the difference between 
books and periodicals with the same title. Once you have found the
periodical and selected it from the list, you must type HOL for 
HOLdings to see what issues we have and where they are located. 

For more searching tips, please see our *** tutorial at http://*** 

Also, please email me if you have any questions- I will share 
questions and answers that I think will benefit the whole group
with this list. 

Sigrid Kelsey