WEL: Greek and Latin
Online Catalog Exercise
Title searches (exact)
Title searches start with the first word of the title, but ignore articles (a, an, the, etc.). A title search will also pick up the title of a series, or of a journal or conference proceeding.
These work best if you have the exact title. If you are uncertain, or don’t have any luck with your first effort, you can try a keyword search.
Examples:
| Title |
Type |
| ars amatoria |
Ancient work |
| ovids games of love |
Secondary work |
| journal of hellenic studies |
Journal |
| loeb classical library |
Series |
Author search
Ancient authors frequently go by only one name, which means you don’t have to worry about putting the last name first. Of course, if you are looking for works by someone more recent than that, you will.
Examples:
| Author |
Type |
| thucydides |
Ancient author |
| gomme aw |
Author of secondary work |
| de selincourt aubrey |
Translator |
Subject search
A subject search looks at the Library of Congress Subject Headings. These headings, as discussed, are designed to give you the maximum return on your search provided you know the correct term. Often, especially in large catalogs like OSU’s, there will be cross-references to point you in the right direction if you pick a term in the right neighborhood. For example, a subject search under “Cicero” produces a cross-reference to “Cicero, Marcus Tullius”.
Subject searches are a little tricky, because to get the best results you need to know the exact words used by the catalogers to describe what you are interested in. Sometimes the full subject term, with sub-headings, can be very elaborate.
Literary works are described with the author’s name first, which allows you to distinguish works that have a common title. In the example below you can go directly to criticism on Horace’s Ars poetica without having to sift through the stuff about Archibald Macleish. It usually works either way, however.
Examples:
| Subject term |
Type |
| cicero marcus tullius |
Person |
| horace ars poetica |
Work |
| postmodernism |
Topic |
| cicero marcus tullius criticism and interpretation |
Topic |
| cicero marcus tullius homes and haunts italy
campania |
Topic |
IMPORTANT NOTE: Subject headings are assigned to the greatest level of specificity possible. This means that what you will find under “Cicero, Marcus Tullius” is everything about him so general that it can’t be pinned down. Results for “Cicero, Marcus Tullius—Homes and haunts—Italy—Campania” will NOT also show up under the general heading.
Words or Keyword search
Keyword searches tend to produce many more results because they search much more of the bibliographic records than title, author, and subject searches, which look at only part of it. This means they pull in anything including the word or words you search for. In some ways the result is similar to what you get from a search engine: you will almost always find something, but you often have to browse for a while before you know if it’s helpful.
Keyword searches are valuable when all you remember is part of a title or author, or if you have absolutely no idea what the proper subject term is. And if the keyword you choose is distinctive enough you will get more focused results.
Some large library catalogs like OSU and OhioLINK include the table of contents as part of the catalog record for new items. This means you might be able to use a keyword search to find the title of a chapter in an edited book, for example. This only works for items added since approximately 1990, and not for all of them.
Examples:
| Term |
Type |
| anabasis |
Title word |
| hemlock |
Subject word |
| liminality |
Table of contents |
Phrase Searches (Boolean)
All multi-word searches are searched as phrases unless you specify otherwise. “Ancient religion” will only return results with those two words next to each other in that order. To override this you need to include the Boolean operators AND or OR.
Examples:
| Search |
Result |
| ancient religion |
Records with those words in that order |
| ancient and religion |
Records with both words anywhere in the record,
in any order |
| ancient or religion |
Records with either word anywhere in the record,
in any order |
Limiting a Search
More results than you wanted? It is possible to limit a search in a variety of ways. Location (which library the item is in), Year of publication, Material type (book, serial, manuscript, map, and many others), Sound recording type, Video recording type, Language, Words in the Author or Title or Subject. Just click the
or 
button on the OSCAR result page and select the limiters you want using the
drop-down menus.A couple of the examples above produced large lists of results. Let’s try limiting them to get them down to manageable sizes.
Examples:
| Search type |
Search |
Limiters |
| Subject |
postmodernism |
Before 1985 |
| Keyword |
anabasis |
Words in the Author: xenophon |
| Author |
cicero marcus tullius |
Language: French |
| Title |
loeb classical library |
Language: Greek Words in Title: anabasis |