Chemical Literature (Chem 184/284)

Lecture 3, part 2: Locating Books and Journals in the UCSB Library;
How to Use the Pegasus and Melvyl® Catalogs

Arrangement of Materials

• Nearly all books and journals in the UCSB Library are arranged using a subject-oriented call number scheme, so that materials on related subjects will be grouped together.
• The UCSB Library follows the Library of Congress classification system.
  • The first group of letters signifies the broad subject area.
  • The first group of numbers signifies the more specific subject area.
  • The subsequent letters and numbers identify the individual book, and are usually based on the author's name and/or book's title.
• "Traditional" subject areas are well grouped:
  • QD = chemistry
  • QD 241-449 = organic chemistry
  • QD 380-388 = organic polymer chemistry
  • QD 410-413 = organometallic chemistry
  • QD 415-449 = biological chemistry
• Other "new" or "interdisciplinary" areas may be more scattered. For example, works containing chemical toxicity information may be found in:
  • GE = environmental science
  • QP = biochemistry & physiology
  • RA includes medical toxicology
  • S includes pesticide toxicology
  • T includes general toxic chemical data
  • TD = environmental engineering
• See Library Locations at http://www.library.ucsb.edu/help/locguide.pdf for a full listing of the major subject classes and where they are located. For maps of the various floors of the Davidson Library see Library Maps at http://www.library.ucsb.edu/about/maps/.

Finding Call Numbers: Enter the Catalog

• Libraries use catalogs to enable location of items by author, title or subject.
• The original library catalogs were published in book form (you can still find an example of this approach, if you like, in the "National Union Catalog".) The 19th century saw a new innovative technology: the card catalog. More easily updated than the book catalog, it dominated the library world until the 1980's.
• Eventually, the technology of computerized databases was applied to library catalogs, and a special record format, the MARC (short for MAchine Readable Cataloging) format, was devised for bibliographic records.
• Library catalogs have evolved considerably in the past few decades. Now most large libraries have integrated library systems which handle the ordering and circulation of books as well as cataloging.

Pegasus - The Catalog of the UCSB Libraries
http://pegasus.library.ucsb.edu/F

• Pegasus is the integrated library system for the UCSB Libraries. As such, in addition to cataloging our holdings, it has circulation information and listings for books on order.
• The Main Catalog contains both book and journal records, but you can search the journals separately by selecting the Serials Catalog from the "Change Databases" screen. Also available is the Course Reserves catalog, listing items put on reserve for particular courses
• For more details on Pegasus, see the Help section within Pegasus itself, the Using Pegasus tutorial at http://www.library.ucsb.edu/learn/mod3/index.html/ and/or the Pegasus Help at http://www.library.ucsb.edu/catalogs/pegasus/pegtroub.html.

Analyzing Pegasus: Finding Your Way Around a Typical Library Online Catalog

• Opening Screen: Note that there are three key sections:
  • the top Menu Bar, with "Sign-In", "Your Account", "Display Options", "Reset", "Feedback" and "Help".
  • the Tabs, including "Basic Search", "Advanced Search", "Search Results", "Search History" "View My List", "Course Reserves", "ILL Home", "Change Databases" and "UCSB InfoSurf".
  • the body of the page, with the Search window and Search Hints.
• Search Options
  • The opening screen is the Basic Search screen. Clicking on the Advanced Search takes you to the Advanced Keyword Search and further links for Advanced Browse Search and Command Line Search.
  • Basic Search offers a combination of true Search and Browse options. The choices with "XXXX begins with" are all Browse searches. The default search is Keyword, which searches in multiple fields of the record, including author, title, subject headings, and notes fields (which includes the table of contents for recent non-fiction works.) Subject searches search the assigned Library of Congress subject headings. If you're not sure of the heading for your topic, search by Keyword first, then display the full record of a good match to see the subject headings used.
  • Advanced Search splits the keyword searches of fields and the Browse searches into two separate screens. Notice that there are more fields listed for possible searching in the Advanced interface.
  • Advanced Searching also allows you to combine mulitple searches, and to limit searches by publication year, language, format and library location. These are pieces of information in each book record which are not very useful searched on their own, but which can usefully focus an author or topic search.
  • Truncation: From the search examples on the opening screen, or by consulting the Help pages, you find that Pegasus uses multiple truncation symbols:
    The ? character or * character (asterisk) may be placed at the left, right or middle of a portion of a word, but it can never be used more than once in a text string.
    The # symbol can be used to find variant spellings in cases where one version of the word has one more chararacter than another version. For example, colo#r will find both color and colour; and arch#eology will find both archaeology and archeology.
    The ! character can be used to find variant spellings in cases where a single character may vary. For example, wom!n will retrieve both woman and women.
  • Boolean searching, proximity: Keyword Basic searches allow the use of AND, OR, NOT and parentheses. Advanced searching lets you use the operators both within fields and, by menu selection, between fields. Basic searching has a button switch to choose whether or not to search terms as an exact phrase or just as a collection of keywords. You can also do more specific proximity searching:
    The % symbol, followed by a number, may be placed between two words to indicate that you want the words to appear within a particular distance from each other, and you don't care what order the words appear in. For example, heterocycl? %3 chemistry will retrieve Heterocyclic Chemistry, Heterocyclic Retro-Diels-Alder Chemistry, and Chemistry of Heterocycles.
    The ! character, followed by a number, may be placed between two words to indicate that you want the words to appear within a particular distance from each other, and in the same order in which you type the words. In this case, heterocycl? !3 chemistry will retrieve Heterocyclic Chemistry, Heterocyclic Retro-Diels-Alder Chemistry, but not Chemistry of Heterocycles.
  • Note that you cannot use truncation or Boolean or proximity operators in Browse-type searches.
  • Combining Searches: In addition to the Advanced Search feature allowing you to search multiple terms in separate fields at the same time, you can make use of Search History to combine searches from the same session. After you have done two or more searches, click the Search History tab. You may then select the searches you wish to combine, click Cross, then select the type of Boolean combination you would like to carry out. When the resulting set is added to the search history, you can view it by selecting the set and clicking View.
• Display Features
  • What you get as your initial display after performing a search depends first on whether it is a keyword-tupe search or a Browse search. If the latter, you will first go to a alphabetical list of the terms in the field in which you searched, starting from one item before your search term to eight items after. You then click on the desired heading from the list to go to the list of books belonging to that item.
  • Keyword type searches take you directly to a list of books. Records will be listed in reverse chronological order as a default, but you can sort the list by any of the headings on the list (e.g. author, title, year, format, library & call number.)
  • To see the full record for an item, click on the item number on the left hand side of the screen, or on the title of the item.
  • While content of the complete record will vary, note that the subject headings, if any, are highlighted links. To search on a heading, just click on it, then select Find or Browse in the new window that comes up.
  • Clicking on the highlighted call number displays the item record. This will show you the circulation status of the item, and, for multi-volume works like journals, which volumes we own. If a volume is listed as checked out, or in process, or at the Annex, you can use the Request link at the left hand side of the volume record to request that it be recalled, processed or retrieved from the Annex. See Personalization Features below for more.
  • Selecting Records: Note that each record has a check box to the left of the author's name. You can select records individually by clicking in the check box, or an entire enswer set by clicking "Select All". Once selected, you can e-mail a set of results to yourself be clicking on "E-Mail". Clicking on "Subset" turns the selected records into a separate set in your Search History, which may be displayed, crossed, etc., like any search set. Clicking "Add to My List", puts the records in a list good for that session. Lists may be compiled from multiple searches. To print a set of answers from Pegasus, you must add the answers to your list, then click the tab "View My List". From that screen, you can
• Personalization Features
  • Use the Sign-in button at the top of the Pegasus screen to enter your account. Pegasus uses your library card barcode number as the user id. Initially, it is also your password, until you change it.
  • Once signed in, click on Your Account to view your checked out items or library fines, update your contact information in Pegasus or to set up automatic update searches.
  • Update searches send you a message whenever a new item is added to the catalog which fits your search criteria. (Update searches are frequently used in article databases to keep up with the literature.)
  • If you are using a public terminal, always remember to Sign-out when you are finished with your session so that other users won't inadvertantly or deliberately use your account.

Melvyl® - The Catalog of the University of California Libraries
http://melvyl.cdlib.org

• Melvyl - named for American library pioneer, Melville Dewey, combined the holdings of all the UC campuses, plus the California Academy of Sciences, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a few other institutions. In addition, it contains the periodicals holdings for the California State Library and the Center for Research Libraries.
• The current Melvyl system uses the same underlying software as the current Pegasus system, and so is very similar in use, though it differs in some details of searching, and the records displays can look quite different.
• For more details on using the Melvyl System, see: Melvyl User Guides at http://www.cdlib.org/inside/instruct/melvyl/.

Special Cases: Conference Papers

• Conference proceedings can be tricky to locate in library catalogs. Frequently, the only information you have is the name of the conference. Unfortunately, the name of the conference may appear in the title of the book, or as a series title, or as the corporate author of the book.
• Fortunately, the Keyword search in both the Pegasus and Melvyl catalogs allows you to search all of these parts of the record simultaneously, and so is the best approach for a first try at finding the conference.
• See Finding Conference Papers at http://www.library.ucsb.edu/subjects/conferences.html for more details.

Special Cases: Monographic Series

• Some series are individually catalogued because the volumes vary widely in subject, e.g. ACS Symposium Series
• If so, the periodical record, if any, may say something like: "see call number for individual volumes". If you know the series name and volume number, that can often be a very efficient way to search for the item.
• On Pegasus and Melvyl, use the Keyword search on the series name and volume number Example: acs symposium 400
• Note that an individual volume in a series may have its own separate record (searchable by author, title, etc.) or it may appear as a volume in the item record of the series as a whole, or both. If a volume which appears both ways is checked out, the circulation information may not appear in both places.

Special Cases: Technical Reports

• Some are listed on Melvyl and Pegasus, but not many. You will sometimes find them in footnotes, bibliographies or Chemical Abstracts searches.
• On catalogs, check the long form of the record for report numbers.
• Bring report numbers to the Government Information Center desk; they'll check to see if we have them, and verify on one of the technical reports databases or microfiche index if necessary.

Special Cases: Dissertations

• UCSB Library owns few non-UCSB dissertations.
• Most UCSB dissertations are grouped together within broad subject areas e.g. QD 47.5 C2 S25 for chemistry dissertations. Within that group, they are arranged alphabetically by author.
• To find the dissertations from a given department search dissertations [department name] as a Subject search in either Pegasus or Melvyl. On Melvyl, add the term "ucsb" to limit your search to local dissertations.
• Of course you can look up individual dissertations by author or title word as you would any other book.

Special Cases: Electronic Books

• Note that not all of the electronic books which the UCSB Library can access are cataloged in either Pegasus or Melvyl.
• For the most comprehensive list of available e-books, see the InfoSurf Electronic Books page at http://www.library.ucsb.edu/eresources/epubs/books-frames.html
• Note that many of the links are for collections of electronic books rather than individual items. You may need to browse or search within individual sites to find the items you need.

This page created by Chuck Huber (huber@library.ucsb.edu).
Updated: 11/27/07 04:26:58