"Publication date" for periodicals and monographic serials in the catalog

Since I've been asked about this a few times now, I thought I'd write something up real quick about how "Publication date" is displayed in the library's catalog for periodicals and monographic serials.

(Monographic serials are book sets where new volumes are continuously published, a lot like periodicals.)

Sometimes you'll see discrepancies between the publication date listed in the results list and the publication date when you click into the record. For example, here are John Tarleton Quarterly and AWI Quarterly as they currently display in our results list. You'll notice that both say they were published in 2018.

When you click the titles for the Full Display, you'll get this:

As you can see, this information is different. During our Enterprise setup, there was a choice between having our Brief Display either display the very first year a periodical or monographic serial started being published (1903 for John Tarleton Quarterly or 1992 for AWI Quarterly) or display the last possible year the periodical or monographic serial might have been published. We went with the second option. Since there's no ending date for either of these publications, the current year is displayed as the publication year. Next year, both of these titles will have 2019 in their brief displays rather than 2018.

If you want to know when something was really published, you have to click title for the full display and possibly even look at the particular volume/issue you're interested in. The "Publication Info" part (first red box in the Full Display images) will give you the general publication info for the entire work, whether we own all of those volumes/issues or not. The Holdings section (second red box in the Full Display images) will give you information specific to what the library actually owns.

In the John Tarleton Quarterly example, since the only volume we own is volume 1, number 1, we can assume that the library's copy is published in 1903. If we owned other volumes, you'd have to look at the physical copies to figure out when each issue was published since in this instance our call numbers don't include the publication year. In the AWI Quarterly example, you'd have to find the particular issue you're interested in to know when it was published.

I hope this clears things up a little!

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.

Sirsi Down on Friday

Hi Reference Team!

On Friday, May 13th, Sirsi will be down for an upgrade which means that certain services, such as the catalog or the laptop vending machine, will not be up and running for a period of time.  

Margie suggested searching Discovery if anyone comes in looking for an item.

There should be signs posted on the laptop vending machine that day.

Please let Margie or me know if you have any questions.

Thanks!

Christy

Agriculture Assignment

Hi Reference Team!

Cathy passed on some information concerning an assignment for Dr. Ford's class:

He is asking the students to find three textbooks (not just the textbooks on the Lower Level) concerning agriculture. This can be any topic as long as it ties into agriculture. For example, swine.

Here are some search terms to try in the catalog:

agriculture AND textbook$

swine AND textbook$

Introduction to agriculture (or their topic).

 If they only want K-12 textbooks, you can limit the type to "Pre-K-12 Textbook" or location to the "Curriculum Collection".

You might also suggest the general call number section for agriculture located upstairs (the S1-S972 section). The students may have better luck browsing the shelves to find textbooks.

I hope these tips help with assisting the students.

Please feel free to comment with any other ideas you may have.

Also, please let me know if you need any help!

Thanks,

Christy

Library Assignment

Hi Reference Team!

I wanted to give everyone a heads up that students are coming to the desk looking for handouts, bookmarks, floor plans, etc. for an assignment that they must complete over the library. I had one student ask me for 25 floor plans so I'm currently cutting some out for the upper level desk. There was another student who wanted to learn more about the library catalog and asked to speak with the Catalog Librarian. It sounds like they may have assigned sections about the library to report on for the class.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns!

Thanks,

Christy