by Nick Banitt
Quick Summary
There is an easier way to get to the exact record you need on MNLINK. Nick Banitt shares tips that will make you an expert searcher.
Library staff often seem bewildered by the broad result sets returned from the Google style search commonly used by most discovery services. We find ourselves looking for a known item, but have difficulty finding that specific item within a broader result set. At the Annual Minitex Interlibrary Loan Conference on May 17, I presented a session about the new MNLINK search program using OCLC's WorldCat Discovery. WorldCat Discovery has a broad array of indexes and search limiters, which allow for much more targeted searching. Many of the limiters may come into view through a faceted display after the result set appears. There are other ways to use this when initiating your search.
Boolean operators are some of the most commonly used search limiters. Searching with WorldCat Discovery you will want to up case your operator (AND, OR, NOT), otherwise when left in lowercase the search will take the term and use it in the context of the string of terms for which you are looking. The Advanced Search for WorldCat Discovery provides a drop-down menu of indexed options to build more complex searches. The vast majority of indexed search options are not available through these menus. You can find the full list of index options on the OCLC website. For example, to do a title keyword search you would start the string of terms after ti:. Changing the: (colon) to an = (equal) will change the keyword to phrase for some of the indices, such as with ti=. Stringing together multiple indices will help you limit to specific content. The following example will provide all video productions of Pink Floyd's The Wall.
ti:wall au:pink floyd dt=vis
Copy and paste the search above into MNLINK to give it a try.
