School of Information Management & Systems.   Spring 2002.
245  Organization of Information in Collections.   M. Buckland.

Assignment 2:   The MELVYL catalog.   Due Feb. 4.
The purpose of this exercise is to provide a basis for considering the organization of a familiar collection, the MELVYL catalog.
Use the telnet MELVYL CATALOG database, not web MELVYL. Suggestion: Displaying the web copy of the assignment in an adjacent window, then copying and pasting the commands at the telnet MELVYL prompts reduces keying. Note just enough to enable me to know what you found. Paper preferred, email accepted (but plain text only).

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.
For explanations, if wanted, try MELVYL's EXPLAIN command followed by any technical term, e.g. EXP REVIEW
What do the following find? Write down just enough for recognize what you found.

1. F ISBN 1-56308-493-7 (Find International Standard Book No.)

2. F LCCN 98-053625 (Find Library of Congress Control Number, i.e. catalog record no.)

3. F DLA ID 11978760 (Search by MELVYL's (i.e. Division of Library Automation's) own record identification no.)

4. F PA TAYLOR, ARLENE G    then D 5    (Personal Author search, then 5th item. Just D would also assume that the first one is wanted).   Try D Rev, then D 5 LONG.

What are the "subjects" of this book?

5. F SE LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE TEXT SERIES (Search by a publisher's series. What is the 16th item).

6. F XT ORGANIZATION OF INFORMATION then D REV then D 5

7. F TW INFORMATION ORGANIZATION (Search on words from the title). How many found?
What is the 240th item?

**ALERT!** Jan 30, 4:14 p.m. MELVYL is malfunctioning and refuses to process the next query. If you encounter this problem, you can try again another time and hope that the problem is fixed or bypass the problem by using other commands, e.g. F DLA 4461918     I do want you to look at the record.
8. F PA LENSKI, LOIS AND DATE 1931    Try D MARC    What is wrong with Bancroft's copy?
A search using two elements: Personal Author (PA) and DATE of publication. A "Boolean" search.

9. F XT BENNY AND DATE 1991 AND FORM SOUND
A three element search: eXact Title, DATE, and FORM (SOUND recording). XT (eXact Title) assumes truncation. You specify the beginning of the title, but not necessarily all of it. (Likewise with eXact SUbject XSU.) Send a copy of the record from MELVYL using the command
MAIL 1 LONG TO BUCKLAND@SIMS.BERKELEY.EDU    Send it to yourself also.

10. F XSU INFORMATION ORGANIZATION AND DATE RECENT
(Search for an eXact SUbject heading and date RECENT [means in last 10 years. CURRENT means last three years].) Look over the titles and dates of publication by displaying them. Tip: A quick way is to display selected fields only: D TI DP

Advanced: Try F ISBN 1-56308-498-8   Is it the same as the first search above?
Hint: Do D MARC with both searches before answering.