What's New in the Catalog

Welcome to Tisch Talks, Tisch Library’s audio magazine. Today’s installment will update you on new features available in the Tufts Library Catalog that have come online in the past several months. If you would like to follow along, point your browser to library.tufts.edu. Pause this recording while you do so.

1. Let’s explore the new search modes that you see on the blue bar on the left. The first one is the call number search. You may know call numbers correspond to subjects so books shelved near each other are about similar subjects. If you do a call number search on SB you’ll see that all the books are on various aspects of plant sciences. Try another angle: do a title search for From civil rights to human rights. If you select the call number link in the record you will be taken to dozens of other titles about Martin Luther King and related topics. Finally, you can browse all the DVDs in the Media Center by doing a call number search for FDV and you can find all the CDs in the music library by searching MCD.

The next new search mode to look at is Tufts Theses/Dissertations. You can search by author, title or topic, but you can also find all the papers that have been completed by students in a particular department. Thus, a search of tufts university chemistry will do a great job of finding all masters and PhD papers that have been completed by Tufts chemistry grad students. And even better, the past few years worth are available online.

Finally we’ll look at the electronic resources search. Use this search to find eresources on a particular subject so, for example you can search for all the databases on American history. A hidden gem of this kind of search is that rather than typing a topic, you can type an asterisk, select a type, and find all the materials of that type that are in the catalog.

2. Another new addition to the catalog is the permanent link to individual records. The permanent link is a stable URL that can be used to bookmark a record. If you go back to From civil rights to human rights and click "Permanent link to this record" below the call number the permanent URL will appear at the top of the navigation bar of your browser, e.g. http://library.tufts.edu/record=b1845723.
Permanent links can be bookmarked, placed on a webpage, used in Blackboard, put in a syllabus or paper, or anywhere else you need a direct, permanent link to a Tufts Catalog record.

3. Ever wanted to remember the name of a book you checked out last year? If you turn on your reading history you can do just that. To set this up, go into My Account (https://library.tufts.edu/patroninfo) and log in with your UTLN and password. On the right side of the screen you’ll see a button called Reading History. Clicking this gives you the option of turning on your reading history. Should you with to do this, every time you check out an item from the library in the future its title will appear in your reading history. It’s a great way to keep track of what you’ve read, listened to or viewed. Note that if you turn on your reading history and then turn it off, the entire list will be eliminated and irretrievable.

4. Also in My Account is a button called RSS Feeds. If you are apt to look at your RSS reader, you can get news about your library circulation activity in your reader. Receive alerts about overdue or nearly overdue books and materials on hold from Your Tufts Library Account News alerts. The alerts serve as a reminder to check your library account (aka My Account).
To get connected, in My Account select RSS Feeds. You will automatically be subscribed to Your Tufts Library Account News.

For best results use Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2, or Safari 3 (Mac users).

We hope these new features allow you to be more efficient and effective users of the Tufts Library catalog. As always, don’t hesitate to ask a Tisch Librarian for assistance. We look forward to working with you. Don’t hesitate to be in touch!


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