PLEASE NOTE: This is the longest section of the Discover tutorial.  It has been created with a variety of examples and scenarios in order to familiarize you with a wide variety of ways to search and discover in the catalogue. It is meant to take you through the various search features one at a time.

 

 

Below is what the Discover homepage looks like, with text boxes pointing out the basic features and functions of this starting point.

 

 

 

 

 

 

New! Lists and Additional Reading Lists

 

Collection Management maintains a variety of lists in the catalogue. Most of these can be

found in Horizon by searching the Lists/Bestsellers index. The benefit of having these lists

is that we can group together titles that may not necessarily share the same format, subject headings, author, etc., but that we'd like to promote with one another nonetheless. We

use these lists to promote graded reading lists, award nominees (ie. Booker Prize Longlist or Polaris Prize Longlist), holiday materials, lists of title or author read-alikes, commemorations

of historical events (ie. 100th Anniversary of the Titanic sinking, 100th Anniversary of WWI), lists to coincide with topical or timely events (bike week, Summer Reading club, etc.), and any number of lists that staff would like to see accessible to our patrons. Collection Management

creates the majority of adults lists, while the Youth Services Team contributes to the majority

of our Teen and Children's lists; but please feel free to contact Collection Management if you

have ideas for additional lists you'd like to see

promoted.

 

Another type of list that we regularly promote in Discover, which happens to be one of the

most popular groups of lists in our catalogue, are the New! Lists. These lists contain recently catalogued materials from all of our collections, all of it ready for circulation. Most are updated daily, and they can be found on the main page of Discover (in the top left of the page), giving staff and patrons easy access to all of our latest materials. Discover also displays a scrolling view of bookjackets along the top of the homepage, representing titles from these New! lists.

 

Please note that the Collection Access Department catalogues a large quantity of materials everyday. However, for a

title to be placed on one of these New! Lists, the item must not only be new to the collection, but also recently published

or released. Usually, that means published within the past year. This ensures that these lists are also timely.

 

Remember that results from any search can be put in order of newest to oldest by selecting "year" in the sorted by drop down menu located near the top of your results page.

 

 

Searching in Discover

In an attempt to make searching in the library catalogue easier and more intuitive than in past catalogues, Discover offers a single search box to explore the entire library collection. When a search is performed in this Google-like search box, all of the library’s holdings are searched (Federated Searching), including our subscription databases (ie. NoveList, Canadian Encyclopedia, Science Reference Center) and our Community Resources Database, which includes records for course/classes, facilities, organizations, recreational programs, etc.

 

Let's search the term Diabetes.

The search retrieves results from the library’s holdings, community groups and programs, as well as newspaper and magazine articles. From these results, we can refine and narrow our search in a variety of ways, depending on what we are looking for. We can do this by using the format icons at the top of the page, by clicking on one of the Refine elements in the right-hand Refine menu, or by sorting the results by relevance, title, author, date or call number.

 

 

If you’re seeking local organizations or classes that assist individuals living with diabetes, Discover can help you. There are two ways to do this:

1. By clicking on the format icon that says Community Groups/Programs at the top of your search screen; or

2. By looking at the REFINE menu on the right hand side of your search results, under Source. Selecting Community Resources from this section will limit your results to only those from our Community Resources database, which is where all classes are catalogued.

 

 

The Community Groups and Programs information is being pulled from our Community Resources Database. Records for these resources are created by cataloguers in the Collection Management Department in the

same manner that they create records for books, DVDs, etc. Each has its own title, location, subject headings, as well as contact/schedule information and a description.

 

Try searching for topics such as Recreation, Volunteer, Sports or Meeting Rooms. The results retrieved provide a wealth of information not only from our library collection, but also information on the many programs and opportunities available throughout the Halifax Regional Municipality. In this regard, you can also search a neighbourhood in HRM, such as Cole Harbour. If you are interested in the area, or live there, this search will retrieve a variety of materials from our collection that are about your community, as well as information on community groups and organizations locatedin Cole Harbour. All of our library programs are also entered in this database, so for this particular search, any upcoming programs (Adult, Teen or Children's) hosted at Cole Harbour Library will also be retrieved.

 

Let’s try using some Advanced search features.

I'm a fan of Japanese horror films, so I'd like to see what recent DVDs we have that fall into this category, while making sure that they also include English subtitles.

Using the advanced search option you can apply all these criteria in a few quick steps.

 

     Step 1. Choose the Advanced Search option located on the tool bar at the top of the page.

     Step 2. Enter horror in the subject field, and select DVD from the dropdown Format menu, as indicated to the right → 

      Step 3. Search

     Step 4. This retrieves about a thousand DVDs, but these include all Horror films we have in the collection. If you scroll down and look at      your various Refine Menu options, you'll see that you can select for Language. You can then specify "Japanese" from this section.

     Step 5. This narrows down your results to about 26 results. You are only interested in films with English subtitles, so you can then select      "English" from the Subtitles refine section.

     Step 6. Lastly, since you'd prefer more recent films, you can make a selection from the Date Range section near the bottom of the Refine      menu. Selecting "Last 5 years" will about cut your results in half, providing you with a very specific but precise set of records through which      to sort to sort.

         
     ● You may need to click on the "x more..." link (as indicated to the left) anytime you don't see the refine feature you are looking for.           Discover's Refine menu only displays the top 4 of any given element, but will tell you how many more there are to choose.

 

   Results can always be refined further by using several other methods.

   Try choosing terms under Topics, Genres or Target audiences, for example.

 

   And note the Select Location menu to the top right of your results. Using

   this, you can choose to only view materials that are owned by your home branch.

 

 

 

 

Let's try another search

Like Google, if we type in a misspelled word, Discover will assist with a “Did you mean...?” suggestion.

 

     Type in the term Recreeation. Note that Discover provides a “Did you mean Recreation?” suggestion for the user. By clicking on the      hyperlinked word Recreation, a new search will be performed with the correct spelling, retrieving the relevant results.

 

 

 

     For the most commonly misspelled words, suggestions will be provided in the catalogue. However, for terms that you search through      misspellings that do not provide a suggestion (series names, author misspellings or uncommon words), please contact the Collection      Access Department. These additional terms with their common misspellings can be added into the catalogue.

 

     Because of the customization features of Discover, the Collection Access Manager and Collection Access Librarian have the ability to      add additional search assistance in our new social catalogue. Take, for instance, the popular cardio dance workout Zumba. Given the      pronunciation of the word, it is easy to conclude that users will spell the term phonetically and enter the search query term “Zoomba”.      Because both are legitimate terms, no “Did you mean...?” is suggested. However, the Collection Access Department is able to add a      default note to this search redirecting the user to the proper or more popular search.

 

 

 

Here's another search to try!

This time, we'll use the example of the term Micmac.

 

Micmac is a legitimate term found in titles, subject headings and a variety of other sources. As a result, the Collection Management Department has added additional information to assist in the discovery of additional information using the alternate spellings Mi’Kmaq and Mi’Kmaw.

 

In an effort to increase additional discoverability of relevant, local information, the Collection Access Department is also working with outside institutions, such as Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management and Nova Scotia Museum. Taking a look at the Refine (faceted navigation) menu on the right hand side of the search screen, we can observe additional authors/performers which include the Nova Scotia Museum. If we click on Nova Scotia Museum and choose the Electronic Resources format, this will take the user to a full bibliographic record that provides information on the Museum's Mi'Kmaq portrait collection, thereby providing a link from the catalogue to the museum’s webpage with information relevant to the search query. Although a pilot project, gathering information from outside of our library’s collection and providing it within the catalogue will continue to be explored.

 

 

Finally, we can use the Federated Searching feature to explore timely newspaper or journal articles based on our search query.

 

Let’s go back to our original Pilates search and perform it again.

This time, pay attention to the gray box right below the search box that says Magazine/Newspaper articles, etc. When a search is performed, our subscription databases are searched for related articles as well as our catalogue. Yes! - All in one search! As the search is being performed, a “waiting for results” message will appear.

 

 

While the results are being retrieved, it is possible to view the results as they come. Just choose the Show hits option and a drop down menu displaying the results will appear.

 

Now, choose the Health & Wellness Resource Center and you’ll see a list of articles dealing with Pilates have been retrieved. Choose one of the articles and a new window opens for viewing.

 

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