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Locating Books:

How do I search for books our library owns? Return to top of page

The most common ways to search the library's catalog are by author, title, MeSH subject terms or by words from the title, author, series, notes or subject fields. The search page for each type of search has examples underneath the search box(es) to show how to enter your search terms in the correct form for that type of search.
If there is only one entry in the catalog that matches your search, the record for that item will be displayed.
In most cases, there will be multiple records that match the terms you entered. In this case a browse list of these results will be displayed, as the following example shows.
From the browse list, select the title you are interested in to display that record. The following example shows a display of the first record.
There are a number of items (fields) in the record that provide some useful information. Certain fields can also show you additional records that you might find useful.

The links under Medical subject will take you to a display of additional records that use the same terms to describe the contents of that item and can lead to additional related items.
The Add name field will display other titles that were authored by the author(s) of the item you found.
The LOCATION field shows where the item is physically located in the library. Many of the items that are not located in the book stacks are only available for use within the library.
The CALL # is used to locate an item on a shelve, as this is how books and media are arranged.
The STATUS field shows whether an item is AVAILABLE for borrowing, checked out to another person already, and any restrictions on circulation are also shown here.

Workshops are available that go into more detail on effectively searching the catalog. You may also arrange to work with library staff individually if you desire.

What do I do if our library doesn't own the book I'm looking for? Return to top of page

If you search in the library catalog for a book that's not owned by the CCF library, the result display will look like this one:
The message at the top shows that no matches for your title were found and the browse list shows the items that would be before and after that title if it were found in our library's collection.
If you had mistyped your title entry, or the actual title differs slightly from the one you entered, you may see it in this browse list. This provides quick access for any slightly different title without requiring you to repeat your search. Note that you can move backward and forward through the resulting list.
If you do not need that specific title, you may see another item in the browse list that will meet your needs, and again, this offers you quick access to (potentially) similar titles.
You are also offered the option to run the search again as a word search, by clicking on the Search as Words link. In our example, that would mean that the new search would look for the words surgical AND care AND elderly in the author, title, series, notes and subject fields. The words for and the would be discarded as words that occur too frequently to be of any use in a word search. Any material with these three words in any of the above fields would be included in your results. It is important to remember that these words may occur in any of the fields and will not necessarily be found in the same field. In many, if not most, cases repeating the search as a word search will provide useless results, so use this option carefully.
If you know that you want/need an exact match on that title however, click on the grey Search OhioLINK Central button. This will repeat your search in the OhioLINK catalog. If another OhioLINK library owns a copy of the book, it will either open the record directly, or display a browse list as the search on the local catalog does. The results from our example search are shown below.
When you open the record for the book you are looking for, you'll see two links near the top; one shows how many libraries have the item and links to a display where you can see if any are available for borrowing and the other link begins the process of requesting that the item be sent to our library for you to checkout.
If you request the item, the first screen you will see asks you to select your school or institution. Scroll down and select the Cleveland Clinic entry and submit the information.
You will be asked to enter your name, your ID number (this is your employee number without the "u") and your PIN (this is whatever you chose when you set your PIN) and submit this information. If you do not have a PIN set or have forgotten what it is, follow this link to learn how to handle either situation.
If you do not change the entries in Pickup Institution and Pickup Location, the item will be requested and sent to our library when it is available. If you change them, the item will be sent to whatever location you selected.
When the item is received and is available for you to check it out, you will receive an email to the address in your library account. If you are using an email account other than your ccf account, your ISP may periodically block mail from our server and you wouldn't receive messages from the library. You can View your Library Account to see the status of your hold requests.
If the item is not available through OhioLINK, you may request the item using ILLiad.

How do I submit a request for the library to purchase material? Return to top of page

We welcome your suggestions for items to add to our collection.You can email the library at library@ccf.org. Please include your name and a way for us to contact you regarding your request.

Cleveland Clinic Alumni Library | 9500 Euclid Ave, NA30 | Cleveland, OH 44195
Phone: (216) 444-5697 | Fax: (216) 444-0271 | Email: library@ccf.org

Last updated: July 13, 2012 | CCF library staff