Public Library Catalog

Among my many laborious tasks and duties, I am a member of the Collection Development Advisory Council.  Recently, as a member of said council,  I have been reviewing our Collection Development Policy, as it has been in existence for five years now and may be in need of revision in some areas.  In doing so, I discovered a neglected reference source that may be of some value to you while performing collection management (weeding) in your assigned Dewey area(s):  The Public Library Catalog.

"JAXCAT?  Seriously?  Why the H-E-Double Hockey Sticks would randomly scrolling through a list of books that we own, help me determine which books that we should own?  Refman is an idiot!"

Thank you Anonymous Commentator, for questioning my intelligence - I'll eventually find out who you are!  I may in fact be an idiot, but you'll have to use different evidence.

I do not refer to our OPAC of course, but rather the book The Public Library Catalog and it's various supplements (REF 017.1 Public).  The Catalog "lists non-fiction books published in the United States, or published in Canada or the United Kingdom and distributed in the United States" and is intended to highlight recommended reference items within topics, subjects or fields of interest.  It is arranged by Dewey classification, and includes "complete bibliographic data and descriptive and critical annotations" to help you make informed decisions when weeding and assessing the strengths and weaknesses of your assigned area.

Be sure to give it a look before it gets weeded - unfortunately the editors neglected to list their own book.

New Google Search Features

Let's say someone just happens to call and ask about the birthdate of a particular actor who played Matt Dillon in the TV series Gunsmoke, that is currently airing on TV Land.  I know, that's crazy - nobody would ever call and ask about that!

Anyway, Google is now using Squared technology in their regular searches, helping to find the answers to brief, factual questions (sound familiar?).  For example, if we search in Google for the answer to the question above, we would search for James Arness date of birth.

The results list will look like this:

Instead of a clickable link, at the top of the results list we find the answer to our query in bold print.  By expanding the Show Sources link, you can see several different sources for the answer, which is May 26, 1923.  This lets you choose from multiple sources to verify the answer quickly:

However, as with most reference work - let the searcher beware.  Though this new feature can be useful, it can also be inaccurate.  Trust, but verify.  Also, similarly phrased searches as the example we used above may or may not list an answer with sources at the top of the results list.  Like all search engine indexing, it is a never-ending work in progress.  However, in the course of preparing this post I did find that one of my sample searches had been changed hours later.  I tried a search for prime minister of united kindgom, only to initially find a bolded result listing Tony Blair as the answer.  Whoops!   A few hours later, I was unable to replicate that same result with that search.  It could be a case where someone searching and finding the same result used the Feedback button (listed above Show Sources) to alert Google of potential errors.

Read more about this feature on The Official Google Blog.

Resource Spotlight: Business Index ASAP

As part of InfoTrac's database lineup, Business Index ASAP provides bibliographic references, abstracts or full text of articles from more than 800 business, management, and trade publications, covering topics such as banking, investment, companies, industries and new technologies and products.

If you've ever used any of InfoTrac's databases, Business Index ASAP will look familiar to you, and it has many of the same features.

In the picture above, we see the default search screen, which is keyword search.  On the left sidebar, you'll notice that there are links to the five different types of searches that you can perform:  Subject guide, Relevance, Keyword, Advanced and Journal Search.  There is also a start over function which will clear all inputs and previous searches.

Below the search field, there are limiting options, that allow you to refine your search to full text or refereed journals only, and by date.

Let's take a look at a subject guide search:

In the sample search above, I've chosen to search for precious metals.  In a subject guide search, it is best to use only one or two words if possible.  Note:  the word and is ignored, and or and not are treated as logical operators and will result in a keyword search being performed.

If the search is successful, a subject guide will appear:

From the subject guide, we see more options.  You can view 3,057 articles about the subject precious metals, or choose see also for related subjects.  You can also refine the subject search by choosing narrow to see subdivisions within the subject heading.

Let's narrow precious metals by subdivision:

In this example, we'll choose consumption data to view the article:

In the body of the article, our subject - precious metals - is highlighted in red.  This allows you to scan through your chosen article to quickly find your search terms to see if the content is relevant to your query.  Just to the left of the article's citation is a check-box which allows the user to mark an article.  Articles and searches can be marked to create a list that can be retrieved later, and either printed or e-mailed. On the left sidebar, you'll notice several options for viewing or distributing the article:  print, e-mail or view a list of current marked items.

 Another way to find items in Business Index ASAP is to use the relevance search function.

While keyword searches look for search terms as long as they appear at least once within an article, performing a relevance search will assign articles a higher relevancy score when they contain terms more often, or when they contain terms that are found in relatively few other articles.  In short, the results should be more unique, or relevant, to the user's search query.


An important thing to remember when performing a relevance search is that boolean operators cannot be used.  Instead, punctuation and symbols are used to denote and, or and not in the search field.  For example, if you want to search for a phrase you would use quotation marks:  "miami dolphins."  To find articles that must include a given word, use the plus (+) sign:  +commodities would include the term commodities in the search.  Alternatively, use the minus (-) sign to signal the search engine to find article that do not contain a given term:  -management would find articles that do not contain the term management.


To search for a specific journal, use the journal search.  Unlike JAXCAT, you may leave in stop words such as a and the, since InfoTrac can still perform the search while ignoring those terms.  Let's find Harvard Business Review, shall we?


First, type the title into the journal search field and click "search."  From the results list, click on the title link.  This will take you to a page with individual issues from the available years archived in the database:

Choose the appropriate year, then select a particular issue.  Then you will see a list of all available articles for that issue:

Feel free to give Business Index ASAP a spin when you get some free time.  It can be particularly helpful for customers who are looking for articles dealing with banking, investment and management issues.