The Card Catalog

To locate a book in the library you will need to know the exact call number.  The place to go to find that information is the card catalog.  Card catalogs used to be in a box by the circulation desk with small note cards in it with all the information about a book.  Today the card catalog is located on the library computers.  This makes a search much easier when looking for something in particular.  The Powers Library card catalog is called OPAC and is fairly simple to use. 

Tips on How to Search

1-  Computers always search for an exact match, so if you aren’t sure about what you are searching for keep it simple, you will have a better chance

2-  When doing a paper or researching on a topic, come up with several keywords, you may get items for one keyword and not for others

3-  Card Catalogs generally ignore A, An or The, so don’t include these words in your search.

4-  The three main search areas are Title, Author, and Subject, so these will be your most used areas of the card catalog when looking up materials.

5-  Almost all the entries on the card catalog will give you additional topics that are similar to the one that you are searching, or better known as a cross reference; this can help with finding more materials for your research.

6-  When searching for an author, make sure that you type in the LAST NAME first, otherwise you will be getting results about the first name which will give you different materials.

Areas of Searching on OPAC

-         Keyword: This will help if you have a general idea of what you are searching, or if you know one word of the title.

-         Title: If you know this title of the book, this is the place to click.

-         Author: Type in the author’s last name then click the button to get a list of all the books they have written that are in our library

-         Subject: If you are searching a specific topic, type it in and click on subject, make sure you keep it simple to get more items.

-         Series: If you are reading a series of books like Harry Potter this will be the place to go, it will give you all the titles of that series to go off of.

-         Call Number: This is handy if you already have a book picked out and want to know more about it.

-         Power: If there are more than one keyword you are looking up, this is the place to go.  You can type in up to three keywords and the results will give you books that contain all three

How to Use the Card Catalog

Depending on what information you know about the book, you will use different search buttons.  For example if you are given the author’s last name, you will type it in and then click on the Author button on the bar.  The results will give you all the books by that author and where you can find each in the Power’s library.

After you search for an item and get a full list you then will have to decide which of the books you would like to look at.  If you click on one of the titles you will then get more information about that particular item.  OPAC will give you the call number, as well as most of the bibliographic information on that book.  Now you can easily go find the book that you need!

Download the following Word document for screen shots:

Card Catalog Document