Tuesday, October 25, 2016

How to search the catalog for a particular genre

Since I was just asked about this, I thought I'd write a quickie post about it. There are two ways you can do this:

#1 - This is the easiest way, but it's also more likely to give you a bunch of stuff about that genre, rather than stuff that actually is that genre.

Using this method, you search the genre term as a subject.


#2 - If you find that the first method retrieves too much stuff that's about the genre, then you can use this second method.

Using this method, you type the name of the genre and then {655}. This focuses your search on the particular field in the record that handles genre terms. Make sure you're doing it as a General Keyword search.


5 comments:

  1. Thanks Melissa, am going to have to remember that field trick. :)

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    1. I love that trick. It can work for lots of other things. I think I used it to zoom in on a particular publisher once (for that, you'd use {264}).

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  2. Thank you, Melissa! I learned something new today! :)

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  3. Thanks Melissa! Can you share specific terms we should use when searching for particular genres? Historic fiction vs. historical fiction, for example? As an aside, I can tell y'all this won't work for all the genres students have to use in children's literature, as some don't conform to Library of Congress. :)

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    1. Sorry, I just noticed this. I have a page in the staff wiki where I try to keep a list of all the terms I know of currently in use (excluding the ones used for movies, TV shows, etc.). Some are official LC genre headings, and some are modified LC subject headings that I'm using as placeholders until the Library of Congress comes up with something that means the same thing or almost the same thing.

      http://tarletonlibraries.pbworks.com/w/page/54204869/LCSH%20terms%20used%20as%20genre%20headings

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