Tip of the Week

Tip for: 11.18.02

Adding Keywords

Often, as librarians, we are asked to help teachers locate resources for units they are teaching. We also might have reading lists that we wish to create. Alexandria offers the option of adding these local subject headings right from the Circulation window to make these items easy to find later.

The command code to use for this mode is V. After typing in the command code, you then add a letter to indicate where this keyword will be indexed. B is used to add the keyword as a Bibliographic search term (i.e. Newbery Award, Cauldecott Award, or your state award books). C is used to add a term as a Curriculum term. These can be as broad or specific as you wish (i.e. Mrs. Smith's Fairytale Unit, 5th Grade Space Unit, etc.). I is used to index reading and interest levels to be searchable. S is used to add keywords to the regular Subjects index. The last four are used to add Study Program (Accelerated Reader, Reading Counts, etc.) information such as R for Reading Program name, P for Point Count, T for Test Number, and H for Holding Code. After typing in the letter for the index, type in the keyword that is to be added. The complete entry will look something like this V C Mrs. Stark's Plant Unit. Then, hit the <enter> key. This will change the mode so that items scanned will have that keyword added to the appropriate field for that item. This will make those items searchable using that keyword in the Researcher.

By adding these types of search terms, the catalog becomes more useful to your patrons. It also makes it easier to remember what items were pulled previously for a particular teacher's units or reading lists.

We hope this will help aid you as you work to make your items more searchable for your patrons.

Thank You,
The Alexandria Staff Librarians