About this catalog

This online catalog provides access to the collections of Orthodox Autocephalous Church of Albania libraries.

We hope it will become a useful tool to all researchers and we welcome comments and remarks at library @ example.com.

About this portal

This portal provides the visitor with the services of a new generation library catalog and can be customized to cooperate with library systems of various providers. It can be setup either to communicate directly with the library's automation system or it can be used to harvest, index and exploit a library's collections. Additional resources such as other library catalogs, search engines, web resources and institutional repositories can be set up for concurrent searching providing a federated search environment.

Behind the scenes, it relies on pazpar2, a fast and powerful search engine which supports all international protocols and standards applied in the field of information retrieval via the Internet. It combines high performance characteristics in the search and presentation of the results, it incorporates a mechanism to merge duplicate records and it provides sorting of results by relevance to the search, in alphabetical or in chronological order. Additional useful tools for the researcher are also available, such as the facets with the most frequent subjects, creators and dates derived from the search results. Enrichment of the content of the retrieved records as well as further utilization and sharing can be enabled by linking to external services with web2.0 technology. Furthermore, references from each result to a subject thesaurus and an interlinking system that makes possible the navigation to results similar to the original search can be customized. The system may offer a personalized environment allowing a visitor to setup a finding aid tailored to his needs.

Searching

The system has two search forms that you may use at your convenience. In the simple search form, you may enter the terms you want to search in the query field and hit the <enter> key or click the Search button to initiate the search. The search is performed by default to all the fields of the record: title, subject, author, notes etc. In the advanced search form, you may enter the terms you want to search in the relevant field in order to form a more specific query to run against the database.

Above the query field, there is a list of the available types of materials in the catalog. Selecting one or more of those material types the search results will be limited accordingly. If no type of material is selected, the search command will run against the whole catalog without any such limitation.

Upon execution, the search command is stored and can be later recalled throughout the session.

The following notes might be useful:

• Default Boolean logic between terms is "and" but you may also use:
  • "or" to find results that include either of your terms [e.g. art or history]
  • "not" in order to exclude terms [e.g. history not art]
• Use "?" wildcard at the end of a word root to perform a search that will retrieve all derivatives [e.g. histor? for history and historical]
• To search for words as a phrase put them into quotation marks " "[e.g. "art ancient"]
• Avoid insignificant words such as: articles, prepositions etc. except for the case that you search with phrase.
• Use a field qualifier to search against a specific index i.e. ti=Iliad, su="Political science" etc.
• Use parenthesis to group search terms and construct more complex search queries.

Examples

These are some examples that might be helpful:

term=history

Search for the records with the word 'history' everywhere in a record.

history

You may omit the field qualifier in order to search for the records with word 'history' everywhere in a record.

histor?

Use ? as wildcard to match records with words starting with 'histor' anywhere in a record.

ti=history

Search for the records with the word 'history' in titles.

su="Extinct cities"

Search for the records with the phrase '"Extinct cities"' in subjects.

su="Extinct cities" and ti=sparta

Search for those records that match '"Extinct cities"' as a phrase in subjects and having the word 'sparta' in title.

su="Extinct cities" not ti=sparta

Search for those records that match '"Extinct cities"' as a phrase in subjects but the word 'sparta' does not appear in title.

ti=history and (tm=bk or tm=se)

Search for the records with the word 'history' in titles that represent books or continuing resources.

Viewing Results

The records matching the search command appear on screen immediately as they come from the database and they become ready to provide detail information once the sorting of the results is completed. The sorted results appear in brief form in a numbered list and by clicking on any of them, the detailed form of the record appears showing the bibliographic information and the holdings of the library. In order to move to another page of the result list you may click on the page number of the Pager. In order to move to the next or the previous page of the list you may either click on the next or previous button of the pager or you may simply hit the <PageUp> or <PageDown> key of the keyboard.

While viewing a detailed record and in order to move to the next or the previous record of the result list, you may either hit the next or previous arrow button of the Pager or you may simply hit the <Right Arrow> or <Left Arrow> key of the keyboard. You may return back to the result list by either clicking on the relevant button of the pager or by hitting the <Escape> key of the keyboard.

In order to clear the result list and issue a new search command, you may either click on the Reset button of the Search form or by clicking the <Escape> key of the keyboard.

Sorting

The default sorting is based on the relevance of the search results. This can be changed and the results sorted by date of publication or title. The appropriate sorting criterium can be selected from the drop down menu next to the navigation strip.

Using the facets

A set of facets can be used to limit the number of search results and so retrieve the most relevant records. The facets include topical subjects, authors, dates and medium types. The facets menu appears during the search in the left panel next to the results list. The terms displayed under each facet are sorted according to the frequency of the term within the search results. When a term is clicked, it is added in the query field, a new search is performed and the results are narrowed to those records satisfying this additional criterion. When the result set is too big the frequencies are estimates.

Sometimes it is useful to let some more space for the results on screen that's why the facet list resides on a panel which the user may hide or show by clicking the button on the header of the facet list.

Browsing the indices

You may browse the list of authors, titles and subjects and see how many times each entry occures in the catalog. By selecting the desired index field and by entering on or more characters, the list of terms appears and you may navigate forward or backwards page by page. You may then select the term you prefer in order to fire a search and see the matching records.

History

Selecting "Session" from main menu, the history of the last submited search commands are listed. The search commands are stored in the browser's permanent storage as well in order to be loaded at your next visit. Clicking on a search command from the list, it is resubmited for execution. Selecting "Clear History" search commands are deleted from the browser's temporary and permanent storage.

Basket

Selecting "Session" from main menu, records kept in basket are listed as well. A record may be saved from the list of search results or from the full record display. For security reasons, the capacity of the basket is limited. The saved records can be stored or emailed in one of the supported formats such as, list of URLs, XML etc. Selecting "Empty Basket" the saved commands are deleted from the browser's storage.

Search Plugin

Use this link to add this portal as a Firefox/IE search plugin

In case of problems

If you are experiencing problems please check that:

• Your browser fullfills the minimum requirements i.e. Firefox 2.0 or greater, Internet Explorer 7 or greater
• Your firewall does not block execution of the scripts required by this site to operate.
• if you are using Internet Explorer 7 with a non-default security level please ensure that the page belongs to the Allowed Sites group

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