• Searching Concepts and Tips
  
• Choosing a Type of Search
• Searching All Text of Catalog Records
• Searching Particular Parts of Catalog Records
• Sequence in which multiple records display

Searching Concepts and Tips

What happens during your search?

• The KorBib Online Catalog confines your search to one particular collection or category per search.
• A search is based on terms. If you enter Seoul and Orient, the system will look for records containing these words.
• The system will display results grouped in three categories, according to how closely the content of the record matched the terms you entered.
• You can select from the list of results by clicking on any "hot linked" title that looks of interest. A full record will then display.
• It is possible to move quickly through a large result set by clicking on the "page" numbers that appear, in increments, at the top of long displays. There are approximately 20 records per "page."
• You can start a new search in the collection or category you have chosen by clicking on "NEW SEARCH." You can return to the list of collections/categories by clicking on "START OVER."

Search Tips:

• Use either capital or lowercase letters. Case does not affect the results of your search.
• Common words (e.g., AND, THE) and most marks of punctuation will not be considered in the search.
• Enter the words in the order in which they would most likely appear in the text. The order of the terms does not affect which records appear in the search results, but it does determine which records will display first (relevancy ranking).
• To make searching more precise, select "Search for words exactly as entered" under the search term form. If, on the other hand, you want the system to generalize your search to include singulars, plurals, and words with the same "stem," select "Search for variants of search words."
• When you are viewing a record, you can click on any "hot linked" terms (e.g., those listed under SUBJECTS or AUTHOR) to retrieve a list of other records with similar terms.

Choosing a Type of Search

There are three ways to search data in the KorBib Online Catalog: text search, search particular parts of the catalog record, and choose from lists of terms used in catalog records.

Searching All Text of Catalog Records

• Searching All Text of Catalog Records--Searches all text in the catalog records--does not search number fields or date fields. Choose this type of search when you:
  • do not know in which fields your search words are likely to occur
  • want to combine terms that may appear in different fields (e.g., an authors name and a subject)
  • want to search terms that appear in NOTE fields
  • want to do a search in which recall (quantity of retrieved records) is more important than precision (relevance of retrieved records). In other words, you want to conduct an exhaustive search, rather than a highly specific one
  • want to develop a quick sample search.

  Since most researchers will want to start their searching here, the system usually defaults to this search screen.

Particular Parts Of the Catalog Records

Searching Particular Parts Of the Catalog Records--Choose this type of search when you:

• know the fields in which your search words are likely to occur (e.g. title, author, subject, topics).
• want to do a search in which precision (relevance of retrieved records) is more important than recall (quantity of retrieved records). In other words, you want to conduct a highly specific search, rather than an exhaustive one.

  Choose from Topical Term Glossary

  • Choose from Topical Term Glossary used in the catalog records--This will show you all of the terms that were included in a particular field or set of fields in the catalog records for the set of records your are searching. Choose this option when you.
    • aren't sure how a particular name was spelled in the catalog records
    • don't feel like typing much.

NOTE:This option is not available in the ALL Collections/Categories search (there are too many terms to list). Collections may vary in the lists that are made available. Since selecting from the list of terms is the equivalent of entering a search with those terms, you may get search results that do not exactly match the terms you clicked on.

Sequence in which multiple records display

Sequence in which multiple records display--The system searches for up to 5,000 records that matched your query in some way. Records are displayed according to how closely their content matched the terms you entered. The results will be displayed in the following sets:

• Records that matched the terms exactly (sometimes, because certain words are ignored, the system will list something as an "exact" match when it does not, in fact, exactly match the terms you entered).
• Records that include all the terms, but not necessarily near each other.
• Records that include one or more of the terms entered.

Within each of these three categories, the sequence of records may be somewhat random. The records are not sorted alphabetically by title, for instance. NOTE: It is possible to move quickly through a large result set by clicking on the "page" numbers that appear, in increments, at the top of the display. There are approximately 20 records per "page."

Go to:

• Asian Reading Room Home Page
• Library of Congress Home Page