Talis Base 2 contains MARC21 records. Search Talis Base 2 when you are interested in bibliographic records for material which the library may not have, for example for cataloguing or ordering purposes.
A good database to use for your initial search for a record is the Union.
If no results are returned from the Union, then try another database. Look at the Talis Base 2 database descriptions for more information regarding each of these targets.
It is possible to set up a search target that will search more than one of the Talis Base 2 databases at the same time. The results may include records for the same item from different databases. Contact your system manager if you would find this helpful.
If the search fails to retrieve any results the reason is displayed in a pop-up message box.
Each of the databases has a number of indexes. These allow you to search by different data elements, according to the information you have. For example, you can search for an author name, or a title.
For more details about the indexes available, refer to the table below.
For full details of the tags and subfields that are included in each index, refer to the topic 'Full details of Talis Base 2 tags and subfields'.
For each index, different types of search are available. For
example, you can search for an exact match, or just the first words of
a search if you don't know the full details. For more information, refer
to the topic 'Talis Base
2 search structures'.
|
Index Name |
Description |
|
Any |
Incorporates all of the other indexes, apart from the ‘code’ searches (i.e. Language and Record type). Note that this may return a lot of records, so it is usually more efficient to use one of the more specific searches. |
|
Author |
Includes personal, corporate and conference authors, but does not cover names used as subjects. For example, if you are searching for a book about Shakespeare (rather than the text of one of his plays) you should use the Subject search. If you are not sure of the exact name, you can use the View Index button to find the one you want, and then select that heading to do an exact author search. |
|
Conference author |
Includes Conference names as authors, but not as subjects. |
|
Corporate author |
Includes Corporate bodies as authors, but not as subjects. |
|
Date of publication |
Allows you to search for items by the date of publication. This is useful when combined with another index to narrow down the search (for example, when looking for a particular edition of a book, or recently published material). |
|
ISBN |
Allows you to search for books using the International Standard Book Number. This may be a 10-digit or 13-digit number. |
|
ISMN |
Allows you to search for printed music that has an International Standard Music Number. This is a 10-digit number starting with ‘M’ . |
|
ISSN |
Allows you to search for serials that have an International Standard Serial Number. This is made up of two groups of four numbers, separated by a hyphen. |
|
Language |
The language index allows you to search by the three-letter language code that is used in MARC21 records. You can find a list of valid codes in the MARC21 documentation at http://www.loc.gov/marc/languages/langhome.html. |
|
Music publisher number |
Allows you to search for numbers assigned by publishers to printed music, sound recordings and videorecordings. |
|
Personal author |
This index contains personal names as authors, but not as subjects. |
|
Record type |
Allows you to search by the code that is used in the Leader of the MARC21 record to specify the type of record. For a list of valid codes, refer to the topic 'MARC21 record type codes'. |
|
Series |
Allows you to search for data in the series fields of the MARC record. |
|
Standard identifier |
Allows you to search using any of the ‘standard’ numbers, such as ISBN, ISMN, ISSN, Library of Congress number and BNB number, as well as previous control numbers. |
|
Subject |
The subject index covers the subject heading fields (e.g. Library of Congress Subject Headings), including names of people, corporate bodies and conferences as subjects. |
|
System control number |
Allows you to search both the system control number (field 001) of the database being searched, plus any previous control numbers used for the record on other systems. |
|
Title |
Allows you to search for works by their title, including series titles. |