Katalog plus consists of three separate areas:
After performing a search in the “Books & more” and “Articles & more” sections, users can refine the list of hits using the “Narrow search” function. This makes their search more specific and reduces the number of hits.
EBSCO has compiled a number of very different data sources in the EDS index. This can only be done when the data’s lowest common denominator is used as a basis to organise the content. The local index files the data in a very accurately itemised category system. We would be able to harmonise this with the EDS index’s less accurate system, but not without considerable losses. This is why the two sections have not been merged and instead exist in parallel. To make the search function more convenient for users, both sub-sections perform search requests in parallel.
Click on “Login [Guest]” (in the top right corner) to log in to Katalog plus via myLogin. The system will now recognise you as an authorised University Library user.
Users can search articles in the “Articles & more” section of Katalog plus. In many cases, once users are logged in they can access the full electronic document, which is licensed by the university, direct from their catalogue search. However, please note that a library card is not a sufficient form of ID here. Due to licensing laws, many documents – and often their associated metadata – are only accessible to members of the university. Members of the university must agree to the authorisation concept for the use of the rectorate’s IT services.
Regardless of whether you search in the “Books & more”, “Articles & more” or “Website” section, Katalog plus will always perform a parallel search in all three sections at the same time in the basic search mode. You will see the number of hits for each section on the tabs, and you can switch between the sections as you wish.
Katalog plus has two search options for the “Books & more” and “Articles & more” sections:
In each search, the additional functions usually found in search engines to further refine the search results are available. They are often called drill-downs or facets. Users can also quickly filter the search results further by year and/or person.
The aforementioned sections in Katalog plus have almost identical search screens, but there are a few deviations as a result of the different databases used to analyse the data. So, for example, the keywords are standardised in German in the “Books & more” section, whereas the keywords are predominantly English in the “Articles & more” section due to the origin of the data.
As soon as you place the cursor in each field, help with the individual search fields is automatically displayed on the right.
Due to the major structural differences between the data in the various data sources, neither the keywords nor the people’s names are standardised in the “Articles & more” section. In other words, names are written both with and without an abbreviated first name, spelled both with and without special characters, etc. You should therefore take into consideration the various spellings and synonyms to make your search effective. You may also want to use keywords in another language.
Search terms can be truncated in all fields by placing an asterisk (*) to the right of the word: so “histor*” will return hits relating to “historic”, “history” or “historicising”. You can also truncate in the middle (e.g. astro*y), but not to the left, of words. The truncation symbol (*) can represent any number of characters.
Truncation can be useful when searching for people because the first names of authors are not always handled the same way in the “Articles & more” section. The first name is abbreviated in many of the data sources analysed, but not in others. So as a basic rule, when searching in this section we recommend truncating after the first letter of the first name (e.g. “Smith, H*”).
The advanced search in the “Books & more” section features an indexing function in the “Persons”, “Subject headings”, “Corporate name” and “Call number” search fields. All entries with the same character string as the search term entered will be displayed here too. The persons index can be used to differentiate between people with the same name using their dates of birth and death, for example.
If, when performing a search, the exact spelling of people’s names, corporate names or standardised subject headings is unknown, it may be helpful to search in the index if unexpected results appear in the search. In the “Corporate name” search field, the indexing function can also be used to find subordinate institutions of the Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg, for example.
For technical reasons, the indexing function is not available in the “Articles & more” section.
Phrases can be searched in all fields. When searching for phrases, two or more search terms are entered in the search field in inverted commas. The search will then only display results where the search term appears in this exact character string, e.g. in the title. Users can also combine a phrase with another search term, e.g.: [Poe “Black Cat”].
However, users cannot truncate search terms within phrases.
In the list of hits, a short title will be listed in your search. Click on the required title to view detailed information and details on the holdings info.
For licensing reasons, if you are not logged in to Katalog plus, some titles in the “Articles & more” section will only display the note: “Access for authorised users only (click here to log in)” instead of a short title. Click on the link to log in and view the short title and possibly the full title.
The default mode displays the list of hits in the “Books & more” section by year of publication (descending), but it can also be changed to year of publication (ascending) or alphabetically by title.
In the “Articles & more” section, the list is sorted by relevance of the hits by default, but this can be changed to chronological order (ascending or descending) by year of publication.
In the list of hits, the titles’ media type is portrayed through symbols. Users can hover the cursor over the symbol to see a short text note here.
Users can add titles to a list, save the unique web address of an individual title or print a title, both when the short title and individual title are displayed.
The “Narrow search” function (often called drill-downs or facets) enables users to further refine their search results. If a high number of hits are returned, users can narrow their search by media type, year of publication, language, people, keywords. The search can also be narrowed to the collections of local libraries in the “Books & more” section.
Users can select several criteria at a time, which will further reduce the number of hits. The individual criteria are then displayed as an active filter. If required, they can be removed by clicking on the “X”.
Please note the technical difference when narrowing your search:
When you click on a short title in the list of hits, you will be taken to the individual data record. This is split into three sections, each with accordion menus:
Users can bookmark titles from a list of hits by clicking on the star and adding them to “My list”. If they have logged in via myLogin, the list will remain active from one session to another. When users view “My list”, they will find several buttons with the following functions:
List functions:
The “Search history” function always contains the last 10 searches you performed. Newer entries replace older ones once the maximum of 10 entries has been reached. If you have not logged in via myLogin, the list will be cleared once your session ends.
Users need to be logged in to add a search request to the list of saved searches. Click on “Save” for the relevant search request in the “Search history” menu item. Users can save a maximum of 30 of their performed searches to their list of saved searches. Unlike the “Search history” menu item, the entry is not made automatically here – the user must do it themselves. They also decide which saved items to remove from the list. This function enables users to save their 30 most important or frequent search requests and perform them again at any time.
Users can view and search for non-Latin characters (e.g. Chinese) in Katalog plus with UTF-8 character encoding (Unicode).
The Chinese collections at the Department of Oriental Studies and other specialised libraries in Freiburg are almost entirely written in their original scripts. They can be found by entering characters from the original script in Katalog plus. Users searching for Chinese titles can also search using the Hanyu Pinyin Romanisation system. Please note that all syllables must be separated when searching for titles. So the book “Mao Zedong de Zhongguo” can be found by entering “Mao ze dong de zhong guo”.
In addition to being Romanised, most new Arabic and Persian acquisitions are available in the catalogue in their original script, and users can search for them using these writing systems.
The Romanisation of the Arabic alphabet is based on the rules of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft (DMG). When entering letters, we recommend not using diacritics (underdots, bars and breves).
By contrast, most of the remaining non-Latin (Greek, Hebrew, Cyrillic, etc.) holdings in Freiburg have not yet been recorded in their original script. So almost all of the catalogue entries have been Romanised (transcribed or transliterated). However, we are transferring catalogue data from other libraries, so titles are gradually appearing in their original script in Katalog plus.
