School of Information Management & Systems.   Spring 1997.   M. Buckland.
Infosys 101: Information Systems.    Exercise 2:   Using the MELVYL catalog.   Due Jan. 30.

The purpose of this exercise is: (1) Assure minimal skill in searching the catalog; and (ii) To set up a basis for discussion of information retrieval. Use the MELVYL CATALOG database (the default), not MELVYL TEN.

Note on the DISPLAY command: A record is displayed automatically if only one is found. The command D [for DISPLAY] is needed when two or more are retrieved, e.g. D[space]4 [Display 4th record].

D[ISPLAY] REV[IEW] -- one or two lines for scanning several items.
D[ISPLAY] -- brief (alias "short") display, the default.
D[ISPLAY] LONG -- includes more information in a convenient format.
D[ISPLAY] MARC -- MELVYL's version of the full underlying "MARC" record.

What do the following find? Write down just enough for recognize what you found.

1. F ISBN 0674169859 (Find International Standard Book No.)

2. F LCCN 85-031743 (Find Library of Congress Control Number, i.e. catalog record no.)

3. F PA BENIGER, JAMES R    then D 1    (Personal Author search, then 1st item. Just D would also assume that the first one is wanted).   Try D Rev, then D LONG.

4. F DLA ID 2989508 (Search by MELVYL's (i.e. Division of Library Automation's) own record identification no.)

5. F SE NEW DIRECTIONS IN INFORMATION MANAGEMENT 25
(Search by a publisher's series in which a book has been issued).

6. F TW REVOLUTION CONTROL then D REV then D 5
(Search on Words from the Title. Try each of the Display options noted above.)

7. F PA LENSKI, LOIS AND DATE 1931    Try D MARC
(Search using two element combination of Personal Author and DATE of publication. A "Boolean" search.)

8. F XT BENNY AND DATE 1991 AND FORM SOUND
(Three element search: eXact Title, date, and form (SOUND recording). XT (eXact Title) specifies the beginning of the title, but no necessarily all of it.)

9. F XSU INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY -- SOCIAL ASPECTS AND DATE CURRENT
(Search for an eXact SUbject heading and date CURRENT [means last three years].) Look over the titles and subject headings of the books found by Displaying them. A convenient way is to command MELVYL to display titles and subject headings only: D TI SU    What is the title of the 5th item?

Note: With exact searches, such as XSU and XT, MELVYL assumes truncation. You must start the title correctly but you don't have to put all of the title in. If you truncate any individual word you must indicate this with # meaning truncation, e.g. TRUNCAT#.    (Updated Jan 20, 1997.)