MnLINK VDX Blog

Did you know that you can perform a search by OCLC number? The only database that is indexed for OCLC numbers is WorldCat, so you must have that in your search profile. In the Advanced Search Field option select Local Number and enter the OCLC number as the search term. This is a good way to select a specific edition for placing requests.

I’m trying to start a regular feature on this list with ideas and explanations about how to make our ILL duties easier. I’m trying to focus on VDX and ZPORTAL, but I’m certainly willing to venture beyond if there are important ideas that need to be shared. My problem is I don’t have a good name for this feature. So for the time being it will be referred to in the email subject as “Ideas for improving my VDX life”. If you have any wonderful ideas about what this feature should be called, please let me know. Also if you have any questions about what functions you would like to perform but aren’t sure how, please let me know. You can respond directly to me or on the list.

Posted by Nick at 9:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When the Simple Request Search option was set up a few months ago we were given a few options to search for one category at a time, i.e. Requested Title, Client Name, etc. If you have the complete information you can just select the search option and enter the information in the search box.

Let’s say you want to find the request for the title A history of the Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota. You would select the option Requested Title and put the title history of the Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota in the search box. You can also just search by the first word of the title and it will bring back all of the titles starting with the word “history”. If you only remember a word somewhere in the title, such as “Minnesota”, you can search for that word by doing a truncated search. A truncated search is similar to a keyword search for a single word. You can do a truncated search by using the % symbol before your search term. If you were to search the term Minnesota you would format it like this, %Minnesota. But a truncated search is different from a keyword search in that the multiple search terms must be in sequence. You would find the previous title by searching the term “%labor party”, but not by searching “%farmer party”.

The truncated searching also works for the Client Name option. If you wanted to truncate a search for all active requests placed by Nicholas Banitt, you would select the Client Name option and search for %banitt. You can also truncate a search for just a portion of a name or title term. You can truncate a search term as %anitt or %holas to find requests in my name.

Let me know if I there is something about this issue that I did not explain clearly. Likewise if you have any other questions about VDX don’t hesitate to ask.

Posted by Nick at 9:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)