OSCAR is the library catalog. You need to use it to find out what books we own, in print or electronic format, as well as videos, streaming and not! It is also your gateway to books available through many other libraries.
Sound great, doesn't it?
Unfortunately, OSCAR is, in fact, rather difficult to search topically. If you know the author or the title of the item you want, it is pretty straightforward. Searching for a topic, however, is, in fact rather difficult. The video below takes off, essentially, where the Meet OSCAR tutorial ends. It is dense and probably won't make much sense unless you have spent time searching OSCAR already or have done that tutorial!
You can also use this URL to connect to it: https://youtu.be/l4NyuaRsAZI
Follow these tips when searching in OSCAR our library catalog.
Tip One: Use the Advanced search Option
Step One: On the library homepage, click on OSCAR - Library Catalog.
Step Two: Click on the large red OSCAR.
Step Three: Choose Advanced Search.
TIP TWO: Consider Your Options!
Always scan everything in the Advanced Search screen.
Location could be useful. Most of the books you can check out will be in the University Library Main Stacks.
Material Type is useful if you want to find DVDs.
Language is pretty obvious!
Published After will help you limit your search to really current materials.
Tip Three: Pay attention to the language that you use
What you type into those three search boxes is the real trick. Think of each box as representing one key idea in your search topic. In many cases, one IDEA in your topic will be a particular ethnic group, like Latin-X, African Americans, or Asian Americans. So your top search box will contain the words or phrases that could represent that group. Sounds simple, but it's not! Maybe you need to use a phrase, like Mexican American. You need to put phrases in quotations. And, do you want to say Latin-X or Latinos?
Finally, often there is more than one word that describes that group, too.
So, you might end up with a statement like this in the first box:
(Latin-X* or latin* or "Mexican American")
NOTICE THE PARENTHESES-VERY IMPORTANT
The asterisk (*) Truncates a word so that you get alternate endings