Using the RLUK Union Catalogue

Contents

• What's in this Database
• Search Options
  • Command Line Searching
  • Using the Author, Title and Subject indexes
  • Using Standard Number Indexes
  • Using Derived Key Indexes
• Narrowing Your Results
• Expanding Your Results
• Preferences
• Displaying Your Results
• Exporting records
• Printing or E-mailing Your Results
• Original Scripts
• Changing Databases
• Data Uses

What's in this Database

Research Libraries UK (RLUK) is a group of research libraries in the British Isles whose mission is to increase the ability of research libraries to share resources for the benefit of the local, national and international research community. The RLUK Union Catalogue represents the holdings of the 29 RLUK members, including UK and Ireland legal deposit libraries, plus other resource records.

Seventy-nine percent of the database represents monographs; the balance comprises periodicals, conference papers, government publications, microforms, sound recordings, and scores. The earliest items represented are from the 1300's, and more than half of the database relates to material published since 1980. Included in the Catalogue are the British National Bibliography (1985 to date), and records from the Library of Congress (Roman script monographs file, 1968 to date, and an up-to-date CJK file).

Three-quarters of the materials catalogued is in English; the balance is predominately in German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Russian. The database can optionally be searched in a de-duplicated form (i.e., utilizes on-the-fly clustering of records). Resource records are from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

Information on the database can be found from the main database page hosted by RLUK at: http://www.rluk.ac.uk/database/.

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Search Options

You can search the Bibliographic File two ways, using either the Command Line with any index, or the radio button for one of these indexes: Title, Author, Subject, ISBN, ISSN, LCCN, Derived Key or Keyword.

Command Line Searching

To use Command Line searching, choose "Command Line" in the search area and type your search in the search box (for example, "tw king lear").

You can combine more than two search terms and use parentheses in Command Line. Type an index abbreviation and your search terms, and then press Enter or click the "Search" button.

All Boolean searching is done using Command Line searching.

Author indexes

Title indexes

Subject indexes

Standard number indexes

Other indexes

Command Line Tips

• Leave off quotation marks around titles or subjects that include AND, OR, or NOT.
• Use "?" to truncate words.
• Add a limit in the same step as your search by typing a semicolon ";", "lim", and your qualifier; then press Enter. For example, "ti cabinet noir; lim pd 1848".
• Refine your current result with a Command Line search starting with "and", "or", or "not".
• Combine or modify previous results by typing "s" and the number of the result from Previous Searches display; for example, "s13 not s12"; "s2 or s6"; "s4; lim lg jpn"; "s5 and sw africa". (Click on the Previous Searches link, note the set numbers you want, and type them into the Command Line text box.)

Using the Author, Title and Subject indexes

When you use an Author, Title, or Subject index button at the top of the search area to search, RLIN21 auto-truncates your search and leads you to a Browse display, which includes all the authors, titles, or subjects starting at or near the access point or heading that most closely matches your search.

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Using Standard Number Indexes

Searches on any of these standard number indexes — ISBN, ISSN and LCCN — generally take you directly to the record containing that standard number.

ISBNs and ISSNs can be entered with or without the hyphens.

You can use Command Line searching to find other numbers such as the Publisher number and the Dewey Classification number.

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Using Derived Key Indexes

There are three types of derived key and all are searchable when the Derived Key radio button is selected:

Author-Title key.

The author title key consists of the first four letters of the authors surname followed by the first four letters of the title of the work. For example, "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen becomes "aust,prid".

Quick author key.

The quick author key is the surname of an author followed by their initials, eg Charles Dickens becomes "dickens,c".

Title key.

The title key is derived fromthe first four words of the title of the work: the first three letters of the first word, first two letters of the second word, first two letters of the third word and the first letter of the fourth word. A couple of examples makes it clearer: "Pride and Prejudice" becomes "Pri-an-pr-" whereas "Lord of the rings" becomes "Lor-of-th-r". All three pieces of punctuation must be included, so a work entitled "Chronicles" has a title key of "Chr,,,".

Other things to note about derived keys:

• There should be no spaces in a derived key.
• Each part of the key can be separated by either a comma or a hyphen.
• All derived keys are case insensitive.
• You can use "?" to right truncate a derived key if, for example, you are unsure of all of an author's initials.

Narrowing Your Results

• You may reduce the size of a search result in several ways: RLIN21 results of up to 10,000 records include a Limit link above the records. You can limit results by date, and language. The Limit dialog box lists values for each kind of limit.
• You can use the Previous Searches display to combine two or more result sets retrieved during your session. (Click on the Previous Searches link, note the set numbers you want, and type them into the Command Line text box.)
• You can chain together limits in the Command Line, for example, "ti roughing it?; lim pd 2000". (Searching for a title phrase that begins with "roughing it" and limiting the results to items that were published in the year 2000.)
• You can refine an existing result set by typing directly in the Command Line text area, for example, "and au hemingway". (Adding author name "hemingway" to your existing search results.)

Limit Qualifiers

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Expanding Your Results

You can expand your results by

• Using the Full display links to go to a new browse display.
• Using an OR statement in a Command Line search.

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Preferences

You can set Preferences either at the beginning of your session or at the time you are ready to email or print records. Preferences set during a session are retained until changed, but only during that session.

Select the Preferences link at the top of the screen to set the following parameters:

• Format of records to be e-mailed or printed. Select MARC, Full, Brief, or Version, with or without clusters or locations.
  • Use Full with locations to include a list of institutional locations for each record.
  • Use Version to display a specific institution's complete record. You will be prompted for one or more four-letter Library Identifiers. When one or more of the locations you enter is represented in a record, that version of the record will be printed or e-mailed; if not, you'll receive the version that appears in Full. A list of Library Identifiers can be found in Limit (select Location Code ) and in the MARC 21 link in the banner at the top of the screen.
• E-mail address to be used.
• Sort order for display. Select Date, Author, or Title.
• Format of records for display. Select List, Brief, Full, or MARC.
• Identifier string for exporting MARC records. (See the MARC Record Export section in the Searching RLIN21®: Guide for RLIN® Users.)

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Displaying Your Results

RLIN21 has four multiple-record displays: MARC, Full, Brief, and List. From any of these displays (except List), you can navigate to other records in the cluster with one click. You can change your default display for the current session in Preferences.

MARC

MARC is the default display for a single-cluster result and is similar to the RLIN Full display. When viewing a de-duplicated result set it shows the MARC-tagged record of the Primary Cluster Member and links to other records in a cluster member table at the end of the record display. Click on an LI link to to go to the MARC display of that record. New in RLIN21 is the ability to see multiple MARC records on one screen, and commands are no longer needed to page to another part of a MARC record.

Full

Full is a formatted display with complete bibliographic details; its contents are similar to the RLIN Long display. Each access point is a link to another heading's Browse display with the same author, title, or subject. When searching the de-duplicated version of the database, Full also includes a table of all other records in the cluster by LIs. Clicking on the LI link gives you the MARC display of that institution's record.

Brief

Brief is the default display when you retrieve two or more clusters. It shows citation information and a link to other records in the cluster (similar to the RLIN Primary display). Clicking on another LI link brings you to the MARC display of all that institution's record.

List

List shows author, title, and publication date in one or two lines.

Navigating in a Display

The navigation arrows "|< < > >|" appear when you have more than 25 results in any display. The "<" (back) and ">" (forward) arrows take you to the previous or next page, displaying 25 records or headings per screen, if such records or headings exist. The "|<" (back to start) arrow takes you to the first 25 records or headings. Only for result sets of less than 250 will the ">|" (end) arrow display, which takes you to the last (up to 25) records or headings.

You can also jump to a specific record number by typing the number in the field to the right of the navigation arrows, which is labeled "Jump to Record #".

Navigating in a Browse Display

In a Browse display only two navigation arrows "< >" appear, since RLIN21 locates and displays the record closest to your search terms from within the entire RLG Union Catalog (the third line in the first alphabetized display). Clicking the "<" (back) or ">" (forward) arrow renumbers the list of records, one through 25, and takes you to the previous or next sorted page.

Note: When you navigate a Browse display, the last record on a page overlaps, becoming the first heading at the top of the next page.

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Exporting records

The RLUK RLIN21 interface can be configured to export records by either ftp or as a direct download to your computer. The direct download to your desktop is the default option. To enable ftp you need to supply the following information to the RLUK helpdesk <helpdesk (at) rluk.ac.uk>:

• Your ftp server IP address.
• An account and password needed for our ftp client to log in to your server.
• A filename and directory where the exported records can be deposited. If the specified file exists, then records are appended to the file. The filename can contain the string "<date>" which will be translated to the date the records were exported. This would ensure each day's exports are placed in a separate file. If you would like every export to be placed in a separate file, then use the string "<sequence>" in the filename.

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Printing or E-mailing Your Results

See Data Uses for fair use limitations.

RLIN21 provides special functions to e-mail or print a selected MARC record. You can also print or download any result screen within RLIN21.

• To print a single record in either Full or MARC display, click Print next to the Export link.
• In a List or Brief display, you can check up to 50 records across more than one screen to e-mail or print. When you click Print, formatted records will appear in a new window. You can then click on the Printer icon (or File/Print), or download the records (File/Save As).
• Printed or e-mailed records include both Latin fields and original scripts in parallel fields.
• If no preferences have been set in the Preferences window for e-mail address or format of records, RLIN21 will prompt you for an address each time you click E-mail from the MARC record display and will use the current display format for e-mail or print.

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Original Scripts

RLIN21 is Unicode UTF-8 compliant. You can search and display records with original scripts if you have the correct fonts. If you are having difficulty displaying original scripts, go to RLIN21 Record Supply: System Requirements.

The RLIN21 MARC record displays original scripts in parallel fields rather than as 880 fields. RLIN21 exports both the romanized and original script portions of original script records, using the 880 fields according to the MARC21 standard.

To search with original scripts, you can:

• Use any standard input method.
• Cut and paste terms from a record in your result.
• Click on any access point that appears as a link.

Use Command Line to search with RLIN21 indexes.

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Changing Databases

If you need access to a different RLIN21 database within the same session, you can change databases by selecting either "Other RLIN21 Databases" or "Home" in the breadcrumb trail above your results.

You can either:

1. Select the "Other RLIN21 Databases" link and then choose from the list of databases that appear in a separate window.
2. Select the "Home" link, and select from the list of available databases that appear on the right-hand side of the screen, scrolling down if necessary.

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Data Uses

The RLUK Union Catalogue includes records contributed by RLUK members and other institutions. Some records may be covered by copyright. Use of the catalogue is in accordance with either your RLUK Member's agreement or the RLUK User's agreement respectively.

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