Ex Libris MELvyl Tells (EL Mel Tells)!

Volume 2, Number 5, August 2003

In this issue:

Using Previous Searches

The link to in Melvyl is a valuable functional area with which to become familiar. This section of the catalog allows you to perform useful and powerful actions both while conducting your current searches and in longer-range research.

Reviewing Searches
By clicking on Previous Searches, you can review a search from the list of searches you have performed during your session.
1. Click in one of the check boxes next to a listed search.
2. Then click on . This will re-launch that particular search.

Combining Searches
To combine searches that you’ve previously done during your search session you can apply the following operations: Use “And” or “Or”, redo the “First search not second” or “Second search not first”. You can use “And” or “Or” to combine as many searches as you wish; however, you can only combine two searches using “First search not second” or “Second search not first”. To accomplish these operations, click in two of the check boxes in front of your previous searches, then click on . The searches are numbered. You can execute previous searches in different combinations to hone in on different angles of a topic. For example, perform separate searches on a group of connected people (or topics) such as Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Baron George Gordon Byron, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft.
1. Go to Previous Searches.
2. Click Combine Searches. You can combine the searches in various ways to include or exclude some or others.

Deleting Searches
You may also delete a search from your list by clicking in one or more of the check boxes in your list and clicking on the button.

Saving Searches Across Sessions
You can save a particular search across sessions by clicking in the check box in front of a particular search you’ve run that you want to save to run again. Click on and the search will be saved in the area called My Workspace, where you will have had to sign-in first in order to save your search across sessions. If you rerun the search at a later date after the first time you ran it, and new records were added to Melvyl, you will see the later, larger results when you run the search again. The number of records you see on your list of Saved searches is the number is the records you retrieved the first time you ran and saved the search.

Although it is not part of Previous Searches, you can also save items across sessions.
To save particular items/records across sessions, view them in the Full Record format, then click on . Again, you will need to sign-in in order to save items across sessions.

Creating Updates
If you have signed-in, you can create an Update from a search you have conducted during the current search session. Update, a current awareness service, is a convenient way for you to stay current with the works of a particular author, or with new items being added to the UC library collections in a particular subject area. Update automatically performs searches of your choosing at either weekly or monthly intervals. The results of your Update searches are sent to you via email, and include information about items that were added to the Melvyl-T catalog during the previous search interval. You can view your Updates (in order to modify or delete them) in My Workspace under Automatic Update Service.

1. After you’ve conducted a search, go to Previous Searches,
2. Click in the check box in front of the search you’d like rerun on a regular basis,
3. Click on .
4. You’ll be asked to name your search and pick your format (short, Tagged, etc.), the interval at which you wish to run the Update, and which collection you wish to run it against.

Creating a durable link to a search or an item
These features can be of special assistance to advanced students and researchers working intensively on a particular topic, and in preparing materials for an online syllabus, instructional or personal web page. By saving a search, users can create a “durable link” which allows them to link directly into or embed a search on a static web page using the URL from the search or record. Such a link might look like this:
http://melvyl.cdlib.org/F/?func=f ind-c&ccl_term=wsu%3Ddigital+preservation+and+wrd%3Dlibrary+or+libraries
(Of course HTML encoding could represent the URL by a linked word or phrase.)

Most HTML editors such as PageMill, HomePage, etc., also allow users to create links.

To create a durable link, conduct your search in Command Search. After you conduct your search and get a URL for it, copy the URL, delete all the letters after the “F/” until you get to “?func=” and leave everything through your searches; delete everything after.

Users can add links to records for books in Melvyl in a bibliography at the end of a paper, or on other websites. (To link to a particular record, you need to have the Melvyl system number for the record to which you wish to link. With that, you can construct a search that will retrieve a display for that specific record. The system number is found on the last line of the MARC record, e.g. 015830572. The search in Command search is sys=015830572.) A link to a particular title would look like this:
http://melvyl.cdlib.org/F/?func=find-c&ccl_term=sys%3D015830572

(From your URL. delete all the letters after the “F/” until you get to “?func=” and leave everything through the system number; delete everything after that.)

By using techniques such as these, the online catalog and digital library resources can be more fully and seamlessly integrated into research, teaching and learning.