WISER Humanities:SOLO (Search Oxford Libraries Online)

Judy Reading and

Jayne Plant

Oxford University Library Services

SOLO (Search Oxford Libraries Online)

SOLO is a new search tool for our collections. It encompasses: OLIS catalogue, ORA (Oxford Research Archive), OU E-Journals and OxLIP+ (interface to electronic databases). This session will show you how to find books and journals and search across collections.

Key resources and services

• SOLO: Search Oxford Libraries Online http://solo.ouls.ox.ac.uk

• OLIS Oxford University’s union catalogue• www.lib.ox.ac.uk/olis• Other electronic resources, including access to

databases http://oxlip-plus.ouls.ox.ac.uk• E-journals catalogue

http://ejournals.ouls.ox.ac.uk

SOLO (Search Oxford Libraries Online) http://solo.ouls.ox.ac.uk

• A new search and discovery tool for the Oxford Libraries’ vast collection of resources

• Offers a simple powerful search across OLIS (Oxford’s union catalogue) and ORA (Oxford Research Archive) with the potential for the inclusion of more special collections in the future

• Includes e-books, e-journals and databases alongside print material in results

• The Articles and databases sampler allows you to get a quick list of useful articles for your subject

http://solo.ouls.ox.ac.uk

The menu offers New search (can also use Clear search) as well as navigation to native interfaces and the OULS webpage

http://solo.ouls.ox.ac.uk

Context-specific help available

Sign in to SOLO to add items to an e-Shelf, set alerts, access subscription resources, tag and review items

The default search will combine any words entered with And ie all words need to be in the record for it to be retrieved

To do a search for a specific book enter the first few (or significant) words in the title and the author’s

surname and click on GO.

“Get It” takes you through to OLIS holdings as well as showing you a link “Additional services” which include full-text if available eg for e-journals.

Automated Stack Requests have to be placed in OLIS

not SOLO

“Patron Functions” (such as renewing or reserving books) is only available in OLIS and you will need to login using your University card number and OLIS password not Oxford SSO

Use Hold Title to reserve

books on loan

More about search options…

Truncation and wildcards

• Use truncation eg hist* to retrieve all words with that stem

• Use wildcards eg wom?n for alternative spellings

You can restrict your search to Books, Articles,

Journals, Images or Audio-visual material

Change to “with my exact phrase” to combine words in

your results eg “World history”

You can choose to look for words in

the title, as a author/creator, a subject or in user generated tags

you need to clear the search to

remove these limits.

You can choose to look for your search term in a specific library, in OULS or limit to Online resources. Online resources are included in the results for specific libraries.

Choose Advanced search

to combine searches and for

more options

SOLO offers spell-check

Results display

You can choose to sort your results by

relevance, date or

popularity.

Results display

An icon tells you at a glance what kind of record you have eg Book, Video

Results displayClick on View

details to see the full record for a reference from the results list

The Details display gives you options such as (if available),Table of contents, Abstracts and “Snippets”

Results display

Results are grouped in SOLO so that records

with similar bibliographic records are pulled together. It

is worth clicking through to see all

versions.

Results display

Limit your results by

topic, library, creation

date, creator or resource

type

Results display

Scroll to the bottom of the results page to see what to do if your search hasn’t worked and suggestions for further searches

Results display

If you choose to Add to e-Shelf you can email the reference, save it or push it to a reference management system such as Refworks. Sign in to save your selections

Click on Sign in and then choose University of Oxford and when prompted enter your University of Oxford Single Sign-On (SSO) user name and password.

For more information on SSO see: www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/sers/resources/ssoathens

Click on Guest e-Shelf or e-Shelf [if logged in] to see your selections.

View of e-Shelf Guest

If you login to SOLO you will see this option at the top of your results list.

You will need to name your query and decide whether you want to set up an alert as well as save the search.

Having saved a query it will be in your e-Shelf

SOLO includes the titles and descriptions of e-resources like the British Humanities Index

Searching for e-books

SOLO includes records for e-books. Search by title or try limiting a subject search to online resources.

To find Oxford theses in print try including “thesis”

and the Department name in your search

Searching for theses

SOLO also offers the option to search across selected databases using: Articles and databases sampler

Articles and databases sampler

This link allows you to see which five databases have been selected by subject

librarians for the sampler for their subject.

Articles and databases sampler

Articles and databases sampler

Sampler searching..• Can be used to quickly retrieve quality

information resources using a simple search box across a range of resources

• Over 200 of our 800 databases are cross-searchable (ie nearly 600 are not and cannot be included in these sets).

• To see the full list of databases go to OxLIP+.• Key databases for particular subjects may be

excluded. • Cross-searching is slow because it is going out

to native interfaces. • E-journal packages eg JSTOR or Science Direct

are not included in sets because they are too slow to search (because they are so big).

This search won’t work unless you select a subject collection.

Articles and databases sampler

You can choose to see the results before the search is complete

Articles and databases sampler

Results look similar to searching OLIS & other collections but here we are looking at articles and other resources indexed in databases such as the Arts and Humanities Citation Index

Articles and Databases Sampler: Results

Break and hands-on exercises

OLIS: The Oxford Libraries Information Systems

• Use to renew your books, reserve a book on loan or make a stack request

• Go direct or link through from SOLO• Offers access to catalogue indexes, cross-

references and full notes

www.lib.ox.ac.uk/olis

Guides can be downloaded from: www.lib.ox.ac.uk/olis/documentation

OLIS: Library catalogue• OLIS (Oxford Libraries Information System) provides an

index to Oxford University Library collections.

• Not all College libraries use OLIS and College collections are not open to all University members. Ask for reference access if they have the only copy. All Souls has collections in history and law which are open to other graduates.

• Some collections are not included in OLIS eg Chinese language materials, manuscripts and older material not yet catalogued.

http://www.lib.ox.ac.uk/olis

OLIS catalogue

Browse Searching

A browse search displays an alphabetical list of the headings in the selected index (title, author, subject etc.) that are closest to the word(s)/characters you enter. The closest match will appear emboldened.

Use when you know the exact title/author or where the first words of the search are known.

Keyword Searching

Use the keywords search to search for items that contain the word(s) you enter wherever they appear in the selected field (title, subject, author, etc).

Use when you are unsure of the exact details.

OLIS v SOLO• OLIS is the union catalogue comprising books

and other items in OLIS library collections

SOLO is a resource discovery tool. You can search across OLIS and e-books, e-journal titles, database titles and ORA

• OLIS allows keyword and browse searching

SOLO only allows keyword searching

OLIS v SOLO

•OLIS offers more indexes than SOLO. Allows more detailed searching and cross-referencing

•OLIS has subject headings. SOLO has facets and many more links•Use OLIS to view borrowing transactions, renew books, place reservations and stack requests•Use SOLO for personalised search alerts, downloading records into bibliographic management packages

OLIS gives fuller catalogue records than SOLO – including antiquarian book notes

Searching for a specific book in OLIS

• Usually the title search is the simplest option (NB omit initial article e.g. the, a, der, le)

• You can also browse search on author (enter

surname, first name)

• or combine author and title in a keyword search

Searching for a book by subject in OLIS

• Library of Congress Subject Headings provide a subject index

eg Browse for “Crete” in LC Subjects• OLIS lets you see cross-references

• Try looking at the subject terms used for indexing a book you know to be relevant eg see what terms are attached to Defensive architecture of prehistoric Crete / Tomas Alusik

Other catalogues

• Go to Other options in OxLIP+, then select Library catalogues as type and click on Go

• COPAC • British Library Catalogue• WorldCatYou can visit other libraries with relevant

collections or ask for an inter-library loan http://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/services/ill

• Full text access to hundreds of journal articles• Browse recent issues of journals by subject area• Download, email or print articles• Use Oxford SSO off-campus• Link through to possible full-text in databases when you see

this logo

e-Journals at Oxford

http://ejournals.ouls.ox.ac.uk

SOLO includes articles, theses and other material from the Oxford Research Archive – you can browse direct from the ORA website

http://ora.ouls.ox.ac.uk

Oxford University Research Archive

OxLIP+: Oxford Libraries Information Platform

Provides access to:• peer-reviewed and subscription based

research resources• bibliographic tools, e.g. LION or Arts and Humanities Citation

Index, available to help you search for articles in your research area

• Online reference works

• Offers cross-search across selected databases• Save searches and email alerts

http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/oxlip/

http://oxlip-plus.ouls.ox.ac.uk

Further help• Ask in any Library and we will be pleased to help• Contact your subject librarian see

www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/libraries/subjects/librarians• Online help and guides are available see

www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/guides or from individual libraries• Why not sign up for more WISER sessions? See www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/wiser

Please respond to the request for feedback which will be emailed to you – we do value your input