• Home
• Resources & Collections
• Services & Information
• Education & Technology
• Research Assistance
• About the Library
• WU Med. Center

Search Becker Site:

 

Becker Catalog Search Help and Tips

• Searching for Journals
• Searching for Books and Other Materials

Searching for Journals

Journal Titles Keyword Search

This search retrieves words located anywhere in a journal record, including the publishing and descriptive notes. Enter the word or words from a journal title you want to find.

• Use this search to locate both print and electronic journal titles. The catalog automatically combines multiple terms with AND (all of your terms must appear in the results). The catalog is not case sensitive. Using capital or lower case letters will not affect your results.
• In general, the fewer words entered in a keyword search, the more results. The more words entered, the more limited a search becomes. You also may use the NLM abbreviation of the journal title.

Example:

New England Journal of Medicine, or
England, or
new england, or
n engl j med

• Any word order is the default option. With this option, the order in which words are entered does not matter. The word entered may appear anywhere in the record.
• Starts with this word or phrase searches for journal titles starting with the word entered. Select this option to search for one word titles like Nature or Cell. The Browse Alphabetical List of Journals search can also be used to locate one word titles.
• From the results list, click on a title to display the item record.

Browse Alphabetical List Of Journals

This search displays an alphabetical list of journal titles.

• Use this search to locate one-word journal titles or to scroll through an alphabetical list of journals owned by or accessible through Becker Medical Library.
• Clicking on a letter (e.g., “L”) will produce a list of journal titles starting with that letter.
• From the results list, click on a title to display the item record.

Select Journal Subject Search

This search provides a drop down list of subjects.

• Select a subject to display a list of journal titles owned by or accessible through Becker Medical Library in that subject field.
• From the results list, click on a title to display the item record.

Searching for Books and Other Materials

Keyword Search

This search retrieves words located anywhere in a record (e.g., in titles, subject headings, authors, publication information, bibliographic notes, table of contents, etc.).

• To restrict your search to titles or authors starting with your keyword, check the Title Starts with this word box.
• Records retrieved will contain all words typed, but not necessarily next to each other.
• The catalog automatically combines multiple terms with AND (all of your terms must appear in the results).
• Keyword searches can retrieve many results that are not relevant.
• Use unique or significant words, avoiding common ones when possible.
• The more words entered, the smaller the resulting list of hits.
• Punctuation and case are ignored. Any trailing “s” is dropped (i.e., disease will produce the same result as diseases).
• Limit by date may be used to restrict results to a specific year or range of years in which an item was published. To limit search results to a single year, type a date such as 1998 or 1956. To limit search results to a range of years, type the range as 1975-1985. Use a full four digit date.
• Max Display is used to limit the number of hits displayed. The default is 100. You may set Max Display to display from 1 to 10,000 results.
• Use keywords when you do not know the full title or full author name of a particular work but remember a few words.
• Use keywords when you are not sure how to get started or what the real subject heading for your topic might be.
• Use Keywords when you want to find everything in the catalog that uses those specific words; note that this is not the same as everything in the database on your topic.

Search By Author

This search allows you to search for materials according to the personal name, corporate name or meeting name responsible for the content of a publication. It includes editors, contributors, artists, conference names, organizations, etc.

• Enter last name, first and last names, or multiple last names (for co-authored works).
• Numbers, such as 1st or 1998, may be entered. 
• Punctuation and capitalization are optional and may be omitted.

Examples:

• Personal names: John Kissane or kissane, john or kissane
• Conference name: Tumor 4th or public health conference
• Association name: American Medical Association or association medical or american medical or health human services.
• Author names may be truncated by typing three or four letters of a name followed by an asterisk (*). For example entering rob* will retrieve records for by Rob Elles, Charles Rob, Robert Dickson, Roberta Lee, Marc J. Roberts, F.R. Robertson, Stanley L. Robbins, Andrew Robinson, etc.

Search By Title

This search allows you to search for books, audiovisuals, and other cataloged materials by words in their titles.

• Enter the most significant words from the title of the item.
• Combining title words with a name in the author field often produces good results.
• Title searches do NOT retrieve journal titles or journal articles.

Search By Subject

This search allows you to look for materials on a precise topic using very specific, pre-defined (controlled vocabulary) terms or “subject headings” to link items of similar content together.

• Most of the subject headings in the Becker Catalog come from the National Library of Medicine’s Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). Contact a reference librarian for suggestions on appropriate MeSH headings or browse these headings at: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/MBrowser.html
• Do a subject search when you want to find everything in the database on your specific topic or when you need to know all the resources in an area.
• Subject headings may not be the words or terms you might naturally use to describe your topic. For example, cancer = neoplasms; high blood pressure = hypertension.
• If you get the subject heading wrong, your search results may be inaccurate or the search may fail completely.
• To maximize your results, start with keyword searching using terms that describe your topic. Look at your search results, find some relevant records, and check to see their subject headings. Use those subject headings for a subject search.
• When spelling is uncertain, truncation can be used in the Subject Search by typing the beginning of a word or name and adding an asterisk (*).

Search by Series

This search retrieves items that are published under a collective title as a publisher’s series, such as Excerpta Medica International Congress Series.

• Enter the words from the series title.
• If you are searching for a specific numbered volume, the volume number can be entered alone or in combination with title words.

Search By Number

This search allows searching for library materials by the following types of numbers:

• Call Number
  • A Call Number search retrieves catalog records by National Library of Medicine Classification numbers (e.g., WL 100 B345c 1999).
  • Use a Call Number search when the only information available to you is the call number.
  • Enter the call number in order starting with the first character and include all spaces and punctuation. For example, entering WL 100 B539g 1999 will retrieve the record (author, title, year of publication, etc.) of the single book assigned that call number.
  • A partial call number may be entered. Entering WL 100 will result in a list of books that have call numbers beginning with those characters.
• ISBN/ISSN Number
  • Entering an ISBN or ISSN number will retrieve the bibliographic record (author, title, year of publication, etc.) of the single book assigned that number.
  • ISBN and ISSN numbers can be entered with or without the hyphens. For example, an ISBN number can be entered as 0-7432-1196-0 or as 0743211960.
• OCLC Number
  • Entering an OCLC number will retrieve the bibliographic record (author, title, year of publication, etc.) of the single book assigned that number.
• Volume number of a series
  • Entering a volume will retrieve a list of records containing that number anywhere in the record.
  • Searching for volume number alone may result in many records that are not relevant. For best results, also enter a few words for the series title in the series search box.
• Edition number
  • Entering an edition number will retrieve a list of all book records containing that number anywhere in the record.
  • Searching with edition number alone may result in many records that are not relevant. For best results, also enter an author’s name in the author search box or a few title words in the title search box.
• Miscellaneous Number (such as U.S. Government Document number)
  • Entering a government document number (SUDOC number) will retrieve a bibliographic record of the single document assigned that number.
  • Government document numbers may be entered with or without the hyphen.
  • Entering miscellaneous numbers will retrieve a list of records containing those numbers anywhere in the record.
  • Miscellaneous numbers may result in many records that are not relevant. For best results, combine such numbers with a word or words in at least one other search box.

 

The following search fields are available when searching under Rare Books and Reference within the Special and Historical Collections tab of the Becker Catalog.

Provenance Search

This search looks for records that contain a field describing an item’s past ownership and/or its custodial history (e.g., provenance).

• Provenance Search will retrieve items (usually rare books) that were donated to the library by a particular individual or institution, or items that were once in the collection of another person or institution.
• Provenance information comes from inscribed signatures, from bookplates and bookstamps found in the item, and from donor records.

Language Search

This search allows retrieval of items having text in foreign languages.

• The items text may be in multiple languages, entirely in one other language, have significant portions (for instance, an abstract) in a different language, or have been translated from another language.

Publisher/Printer Search

This search retrieves records containing the personal and corporate names connected with the item’s publication and printing.

• Illustrators, lithographers, translators and other people associated with the item’s production who are not specifically authors may be retrieved using the Publisher/Printer Search.

Collection Limit

Using the Collection Limit in conjunction with words typed in any other search box(es) limits your search to a specific Rare Book Collection.

• The Rare Books are arranged into various collections to distinguish particularly significant donations and to separate the earlier items from the later publications.