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The NSPCC Library catalogue contains details of books, articles, audio-visual materials and serials held in the Library.
The Simple search is helpful for carrying out basic searches (e.g. for a single title or author) and for familiarising yourself with the catalogue.
You can find Help information by clicking on the Help link at the left of your screen. You can also click on any of the field names on the search screen (e.g. Author, Material type) to jump to the relevant section of Help for that field.
To carry out a search in simple search, enter your search term into the appropriate field (see below) and click on Search.
To search for items by a specific author, enter the author's surname followed by a comma and their initial or first name (e.g. abrams, r or abrams, rebecca). This will give you details of all the items in the NSPCC Library written by that author.
To search for items by a corporate author e.g. an academic institution, Government department or organisation, enter the name of the corporate author, (e.g. NSPCC).
If you are unsure of the name of the author or organisation you wish to search on, or if you wish to browse the list of authors, enter the first letter(s) of the author or organisation name, (e.g. smith, department), and click on the corresponding link, i.e. Author list for a named individual or Corporate authors for an organisation. Clicking on a name from the list will retrieve all the records on the catalogue containing that author's name.
To search for items with a specific title, or with specific words in the title, enter the key words you are interested in (e.g. child maltreatment). It does not matter what order the words are in (e.g. child maltreatment will find Reducing child maltreatment: a guidebook for parent services and Maltreatment and the school-age child).
The system searches for words that start with the letters you enter, so if you enter child you will also find children, childhood, childish etc. and maltreat will also find maltreats, maltreated, maltreating, maltreatment etc.
To search for items by a specific publisher, enter the name of the publisher into the Publisher field.
To find items published in a specific year, enter the year into the Year published field (e.g. 2001). If you want to find items published over a period of years, you can truncate the search by missing off the final digit of the year (e.g. 199 would find all items published in the 1990s, 200 would find items published from 2000 to 2009 etc.) If you want to find references from a more specific period of years, (e.g. 1996-1998), you will need to use the advanced search.
All the items on the catalogue fall into one of the following material types:
To search for items by material type, enter one of the above types into the Material type field. If you want to search for all types of material, leave the field blank.
To search for items by ISBN (International Standard Book Number), enter the ISBN of the book you are looking for into the ISBN field (e.g. 0470843903).
All items in the catalogue have subject terms attached to them which describe the content of the item. The subject terms are selected from the NSPCC Library and Information Service Thesaurus. To search for items by subject term, enter the term into the Subject term field. If you are not sure what term to use, or would like to browse the thesaurus, enter the first letter(s) of the term and then click on Subject list. From the subject list, you can select the term you are interested in and click on it to find all items described by that subject term. You can also see the broader or narrower terms for the term you are interested in, which can help you increase or decrease the scope of your search.
E.g. if you enter child abuse and click Subject list you can then click on the child abuse link to find all records indexed using that term. You will also see the broader terms for child abuse (abuse, family violence) which you can click on to find broader records, and the narrower terms (child neglect, child sexual abuse etc.), which you can click on to find more specific records.
If you can't find an appropriate term to describe the concept you are looking for, try a free text search.
To search for records which contain a certain word(s) in the title or the abstract, enter the word(s) into the Free text field. It does not matter what order the words are entered in, and words are automatically truncated so the system will search for any words that start with the string of characters you enter. E.g. entering assess would also find assessed, assessing, assessment and so on.
To find articles from a specific journal, enter the name of the journal into the Journal title field, (e.g. Community Care). If you are unsure of the exact name of the journal, or would like to see which journals we hold, click on Journal list.
If you enter search terms in more than one field, the system will search for records that include all the terms you have entered. For example, if you enter westcott, h in the author field and 1996 in the date field, your search will retrieve only those items by H Westcott, published in 1996. If you want to combine the author, corporate author or subject term fields with any other fields you will have to enter the author name or subject term in full rather than using the lists to find the term you want.
You can choose how you want your search results to be displayed by clicking on the presentation drop-down menu to select either:
Short
Brief presentation of results which allows records to be selected and/or deselected and then displayed together.
Full
Brief presentation of results which allows records to be selected and/or deselected and then displayed together. The detailed format of this presentation includes the title, author/corporate author, place, publisher, year, ISBN, pages, shelf mark, subject terms, abstract, journal title and holdings. This presentation is suitable for producing reading lists.
Harvard
Brief presentation of results which allows records to be selected and/or deselected and then displayed together. The detailed format of this presentation displays records in Harvard style. This presentation is suitable for bibliographic referencing.
You can choose whether to see 10, 20 or 50 results per page by clicking on the show drop-down menu and selecting the number you want.
You can choose to sort your results by author, title, publisher, year, material or journal by clicking on the sort drop-down menu and selecting the appropriate term.
The Advanced search is helpful for carrying out more complex searches, particularly subject searches, as there are more fields to allow you to enter and combine more search terms.
As with Simple search, you will find help information by clicking on the Help link at the left hand side of the screen.
The search fields in advanced search are the same as those in simple search: author, title, publisher, year of publication, material type, ISBN, subject term, free text and journal title. See the simple search instructions above for details about how to enter search terms into these fields.
In advanced search you can change the fields by clicking on the field drop-down menus and choosing the field name you require. This will allow you to combine several search terms from the same field(s) (e.g. three different subject terms or two different authors, or both). For more help with combining search terms, see the Boolean instructions below.
The operators allow you to specify the scope of your search term(s). You can choose from the following by clicking on the Operator drop-down menu and selecting the operator you require:
Once you have selected the appropriate field name and operator, you can enter your search term into the search term field. See the simple search instructions above for details about the correct format for search terms.
The system defaults to using truncation, so the truncation box is automatically ticked. This means the system will search for words which start with the characters you enter, e.g. protect will also find protects, protecting, protection and so on. If you remove the tick from the truncation box the system will only retrieve items containing the exact word you have entered.
You can use the Boolean option to combine more than one search field to broaden or narrow your search. This is most useful for combining subject terms but can also be used to combine any of the other fields.
Use the Boolean drop-down menu to select one of the following:
Examples:
You are looking for references on domestic violence and child contact. You are aware that Marianne Hester and Chris Pearson have written a number of articles on this subject and would be interested to see these, and anything else that has been written on this issue, particularly in the last five years. You could try the following:
author = hester, m and author = pearson, c
would find all records by Marianne Hester and Chris Pearson.
author = hester, m or author = pearson, c
would find all records by Marianne Hester or Chris Pearson, or both.
author = hester, m and not author = pearson, c
would find all records by Marianne Hester and not Chris Pearson.
subject term = family violence and subject term = contact
would find all records indexed by the subject terms family violence and contact.
subject term = family violence or subject term = children in violent families and subject term = contact
would find all records containing family violence and/or children in violent families and contact.
subject term = family violence and subject term = contact and year of publication >= 1998
would find all records indexed by the subject terms family violence and contact and published in or since 1998.
'subject term = family violence and subject term = contact and not author = hester, m
would find all records indexed by the subject terms family violence and contact but not written by Marianne Hester.
As with the Simple search, you can choose how you want your search results to be displayed by clicking on the presentation drop-down menu to select either:
Short
Brief presentation of results which allows records to be selected and/or deselected and then displayed together.
Full
Brief presentation of results which allows records to be selected and/or deselected and then displayed together. The detailed format of this presentation includes the title, author/corporate author, place, publisher, year, ISBN, pages, shelf mark, subject terms, abstract, journal title and holdings. This presentation is suitable for producing reading lists.
Harvard
Brief presentation of results which allows records to be selected and/or deselected and then displayed together. The detailed format of this presentation displays records in Harvard style. This presentation is suitable for bibliographic referencing.
You can choose whether to see 10, 20 or 50 results per page by clicking on the show drop-down menu and selecting the number you want.
You can choose to sort your results by author, title, publisher, year, material or journal by searching by clicking on the sort drop-down menu and selecting the appropriate term.
Once you have entered your search terms and clicked search, the results of your search will be displayed (Results of search). The brief presentation is the same for all presentation formats.
The total number of records retrieved by your search and the number of records displayed on that page will be displayed at the top of the screen. You will then see a numbered list of titles retrieved. Each title is a hyperlink to a full display of that record. If you click on a title, you will be taken to a detailed presentation of that record.
Alternatively, you can mark the records you are interested by clicking in the check boxes beside the titles, and then click on the Detailed display button at the bottom of the screen to display detailed presentations of all the titles you are interested in.
Once you have clicked on either an individual record or the detailed display button, you will see a detailed presentation of the record(s). The format of the records will depend on the presentation you selected from the search screen (see the presentation section above).
If you have selected to see the full presentation, you will see that the author(s), publisher(s) and subject term(s) for each record are displayed as hyperlinks. You can click on any of these links to search for records containing that term. In the brief presentation, you will only see hyperlinks for the author(s) and publisher(s). Hyperlinks are not displayed in the Harvard presentation.
Once you have selected the records you are interested in, you can print them using the print option in your browser.
E.g. if you have Internet Explorer, either click the Print button from the toolbar at the top of your screen, or select Print from the File menu.
You can also email the results of your search, using the mail option in your browser.
E.g. if you have Internet Explorer, either click the Mail button from the toolbar at the top of your screen and select Send page, or select Send and Page by e-mail from the File menu.
You can also save the results of your search to your computer or to disk by selecting the Save option in your browser.
E.g. if you have Internet Explorer, select Save as from the File menu and select a destination for the file.
Once you have finished a search, you can click on the New search link at the bottom of any of the results pages to start a new search. Alternatively, use the Back button on your browser to get back to the search screen and use the Reset button to clear your previous search.
If you need more help with using the catalogue or constructing your search, please contact the NSPCC Library on 0808 800 5000 or email help@nspcc.org.uk
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Copyright © 2011 NSPCC - All rights reserved. National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Weston House, 42
Curtain Road, London EC2A 3NH. Incorporated by Royal Charter. Registered charity number 216401. NSPCC, charity registered in Scotland, charity number SC037717.