At Your Service: May 2005 Archives

A number of user specific functions are available in our library's catalog, Diamond. These include seeing your currently checked-out items, renewing books, and, what I will write about today, saved searches.

If you are doing ongoing research in an area or just want to stay up on whatever new books come into the library in your field, the saved searches allow you get email notifications every few weeks of new additions to the library that fall in whatever parameters you specify.

I'll run through a brief example (where necessary I use bright green to highlight in the images; images 2-4 are clickable for a larger view):

Go to Diamond and click on the "My Library Account" button. You will need to click through the login screen and then login with your name and ID number.

This will then take you to your Library Account screen, which includes your name and contact information, the number of books you have out, any holds you might have, as well as links to search the catalog and to see your saved searches.

Click on "Search the Catalog". This will take you to the catalog search screen. Do a search on your topic. In this example I did a keyword search for "film noir" (I want to see any new books or dvds that come in). When you get a result screen there will be a "Save this Search" button underneath the text fields (this button does not appear if you are not logged in when you do a search). Click on this to save your search.

Follow the "Patron Record" button at the top back to the Library Account screen. Now when you click on "Saved Searches" you will see the saved search. Through this screen you can see the search again (link to the right), delete it, or "mark for email". If you click off "mark for email" and then "update list" you will be set-up for email notifications.

Periodically you will be sent an email with any new additions to your saved search(es), including author, title, call number, and subject(s), as well as a link into the library catalog record for the item.

If you have any questions or need assistance contact Derik Badman.

--Derik A. Badman

A bookmarklet is similar to any other "Favorite" or a "Bookmark" that you save in your internet browser. Similar, but also different. It is a very small program that takes input from the user and loads up a page based on that input.

Below are two bookmarklets that can search Diamond, our library catalog. Instead of having to navigate into the catalog and click on the search you want to do, the bookmarklet will search the catalog by keyword in one of two ways:

1) Highlight some text on your screen with your cursor. Then click on the bookmarklet. It will search the catalog for the words you highlighted and bring up a page of results.

2) Click on the bookmarklet. A box will pop-up prompting you to enter keywords. Type what you what to search for in the box and hit "OK". You will then get a page of results in the catalog.

To use the bookmarklet you need to add it to your list of Favorites/Bookmarks. You can drag the link into your browser toolbar or right click and select "Add to Favorites/Bookmark this Link." It works best if it is the group of bookmarks that appear in your toolbar.

For Internet Explorer Users:

Diamond Keyword Search

For Firefox users:

Diamond Keyword Search

--Derik A. Badman