Can I save reminders of books I want to request in the future from session to session?

If you are looking for an author, and you are not sure of the precise spelling of the last name, it can be advantageous to use an Author search. Enter the last name first, and as much of the first name as you know. For example if you don't now whether an author is Phillip or Philip, enter Gulley, Phil and you would get any author that begins with Gulley, Phil

To get the same effect, (author name begins with) using Keyword, you would need to use the truncation symbol "*" to indicate optional endings on Phil Phil* would retrieve either phillip or philip

If you do an Author search for Cornwell, patr
the results of Patricia Cornwell's works come back to you alphabetically by Title.

If you then wish to reorder the results, select the Limit/Sort Search button and you will have the option to: Sort results by year

If you do a Keyword search for
Patricia cornwell
The results come back to you in an order determined by relevance.

You then have the option to change the order from sorted by relevance to sorted by date, giving the results in reverse chronological order; that is, newest publication date first.

Collection allows you to specify either the Adult collection or the Children's collection at a particular Minuteman library. (e.g. Newton Main or Newton Main Children's)

Location allows you to limit to a particular library (including its branches, if there are branches). This type of search would include both children's and adult materials.

Do a Keyword search for audiobooks. From the result screen, you can further choose "Modify Search" to have the opportunity to limit by the particular material type you want (for example, "spoken CD")

The system can tell when the volumes differ in examples such as:

• Magazine issues
• Different episodes of a television series
• Multiple volumes in a series of travel guides
• Etc.

In such cases, you are prompted to indicate which volume you want. Otherwise, the system should simply choose the first available copy.

1. Consult a Reference staff member in your library for additional help searching the catalog.
2. Search the Virtual Catalog, which allows you to search multiple other Massachusetts libraries, and place a request for titles you find there. (See "Virtual Catalog" link in top banner of Minuteman Catalog.)
3. Request that library staff obtain the item for you by Interlibrary Loan (ILL).

When there is a long list of holdings, you will need to click on the button "View additional copies …" From the list of all copies, click on the button "Limit to Available"

For example, if you are looking for Handel's Messiah conducted by Neville Marriner.

Do a Keyword search for: handel messiah marriner
The 14 resulting titles all have those 3 words in them and should provide your desired work.

Similarly, you could include the name of any of the other performers you wish in the Keyword search

Other musical examples to do with a Keyword search:

Beethoven symphony 3 szell
to find Beethoven's Symphony No 3 conducted by George Szell

Kiri Te Kanawa boheme
to find the opera La Boheme sung by Kiri Te Kanewa

Use Keyword searching. Search for the title of the song (in quotation marks) and the performer's name, if desired.

Keyword search for:

• "you've got a friend" james taylor
• for "you've got a friend" by James Taylor
• "heartbreak hotel" elvis
• for "Heartbreak Hotel" by Elvis Presley
• "pirates of penzance" kline
• For "Pirates of Penzance" sung by Kevin Kline

Collection is a narrower breakdown. You can choose down to the building level in towns with branch libraries. See the 2 Arlington locations in the example below. You can differentiate between Adult and Children's collections within those buildings. See Acton and Acton Children's.

Collection:

• ANY
• Acton
• Acton Children's
• Arlington Main
• Arlington Main Children's
• Arlington Fox
• Arlington Fox Children's
• Ashland
• Ashland Children's
• And so forth

Location allows you to search the entire Minuteman network (41 libraries) at once, all of the Children's departments at once, or the holdings of an individual town or academic institution

Location:

• All Locations Collection
• All Children's departments
• Acton
• Arlington
• Ashland
• And so forth

The other difference is the extent of the items displayed. If you limit by Location, only the items belonging to the Location you chose are displayed. If you limit by Collection, you see all of the items attached to the titles that result from your search.

You can use the "*" character to indicate up to 5 characters at the end of a word, or the characters "**" to indicate any number of characters at the end of a word.

• Librar* would find library and libraries and librarians
• Librar** would find the above words as well as librarianship

Do a keyword search for your title and add either "full screen" or "widescreen" to your search. For example:
13 going on thirty full screen or 13 going on thirty widescreen

The most probable cause of older data displaying when you are at home is that your browser settings are such that cached (saved) data is being displayed.

If you are using Internet Explorer, we recommend setting "Check for newer versions of stored pages (you can find this setting under Tools | Internet Options | Settings (for Temporary Internet Files) ) to either "Automatically" or "Check every visit to the page." Verify that the settings are NOT disabled or set to "Never check."

Other browsers may have analogous settings.

Or, even better, recommend clearing cache as follows:

To delete temporary internet files in IE:

Click on "View", "Internet Options", under the General tab in the Temporary Internet Files section, click on "Delete Files." It will ask you if you want to delete all temporary files to which you would answer "Yes." Also make sure you check the box that says "Delete all offline content." Note that you can remove cookies at this point (subscription content) but this is not recommended, so leave that option unchecked.

Emptying cache (temporary Internet files) in Netscape Communicator:

Click on "Edit", "Preferences" and double-click "Advanced." Click once on "Cache" and from the right side of the window select "Clear Disk Cache." It will confirm that you want to remove all the files in your disk cache to which you answer "Yes."

Emptying cache (temporary Internet files) in Mozilla Firefox:

Click on "Tools", "Options." Click on the "Privacy" category. Scroll down to the bottom and click on "Clear" to the right of the Cache subcategory.

When searching the Minuteman catalog with the intention of finding only items at a particular library change the option from "All Locations Collection" to the library you prefer.

To find the newest videos and DVDs at a particular library do a Keyword search for the word 'videorecording' and then choose the library where you prefer to pick up your material.

There are 3 ways that you can limit your search to juvenile material only.

1. 1. From the initial search page, use the dropdown menu to change "All Locations Collection" to "All children's departments" This will execute your search and limit results to titles held in one or more children's departments in the Minuteman Library Network.
2. 2. On the Advanced Search screen, enter your search terms and then add "And juvenile". This will look for any titles that include a subject heading of either "juvenile fiction" or "juvenile literature"
3. 3. On the Advanced Search screen, enter your search and make one or more selections of Children's departments from the dropdown box labeled "Collection". You can use the Ctrl key to make multiple selections.
   
   For example, you could select to limit your search to:
      Cambridge Central Square Childrens
      Cambridge Collins Childrens
   if you are interested in finding materials at a particular children's department or departments.

For further help searching the public catalog, contact staff at your library.

The following example finds materials about soccer that are not cataloged as juvenile materials:

Use the Advanced Search

In the first row of the search criteria
Any field : soccer
then use the drop down menu to choose the "and not" operator

In the second row of the search criteria:
Subject: juvenile



This constructs the search: (soccer) and not d:(juvenile)

The "d:" identifies the subject field

Records for juvenile materials have one of the following 2 phrases in the Subject field
   Juvenile fiction
   Juvenile literature

So eliminating records with "Juvenile" in the subject heading should result in only adult materials. (A possible exception is those new records which have not yet had any Subject headings added to the record). You can see the Subject headings by displaying either the Find Similar Items tab or the Full Record tab display when you are viewing an individual entry.

A software upgrade installed on 10/13/2008 requires that session cookies be allowed even to search the catalog. If you have set IE to block all cookies you will not be able to search the catalog. Making the Privacy setting High allows searching the catalog but not access to My Account. Making the privacy setting Med-high or lower allows both searching and access to My Account.