What's New in BNC CataList?

You can access the Advanced Search at any time from the link below the Quick Search box. Clicking the link brings you to the Search page, with the Advanced Search form open.

If you run a Quick Search for book results, you'll also see the Advanced Search bar at the top of the search result page. You can click the bar to open and access the Advanced Search form at any time on that page.

At the top left of the form, you’ll see the option to search for text matches in specific data points. This section looks for exact word matches in the selected data field. This relies on publishers providing names and series consistently across titles.

Title: This option searches for matches across title and subtitle fields.

Contributor: This option searches for matches on all contributor roles including author, illustrator, editor, photographer, etc.

Series: Search for series matches for all of the books in a particular series, for example, “The Massey Lectures” or “Dog Man”.

All Subjects: If you know the subject you are looking for, i.e. Cooking, you can type it in here, or if you prefer to search specific subject codes, use the ‘Search specific subjects’ function in the next section.

Publisher: If you know the publisher of a book, i.e. Dundurn, Hachette, Penguin Random House, Groundwood, etc., you can type it into this field to see results that include publications by that publisher.

Imprint: You can search for a specific imprint’s title list using the Imprint option. For example, you could search for all titles in Goose Lane’s icehouse poetry titles by searching for “icehouse poetry”.

Canadian distributor: The Canadian distributor option allows you to locate sets of titles that can be ordered together from a single source.

Publisher keywords: Many publishers now add keywords to their metadata to help surface results that may not be otherwise easily found using the title, subject or other common metadata fields. Try searching for keywords like “indigenous”, “BIPOC” or topical or seasonal themes such as “pandemic” or “Halloween”.

When you’ve set your parameters, click the Run Search button at the bottom left of the form.

Boolean search examples

Use the ‘Add another parameter’ button and the AND, OR and NOT operators to expand or limit results:

• Use the AND operator to match across indexes. For example, books with a subject containing the word “Crafts” AND a distributor “Scholastic”

• Use the OR operator to find books where either criterion is met. For example, where either Robert Munsch OR Michael Martchenko is a contributor

• Use the NOT operator to exclude a subset of potential matches.

To limit your result set to specific subjects, this section allows you to look up and select BISAC or Thema subjects.

• To use this feature, select your preferred subject standard, BISAC or Thema, and click the blue Add/Edit Subjects button under the Search subject codes text box. This opens a lookup box and the subject tree.

• The system will not allow you to type in your own text into the display box. Once you have selected the subject code(s) you would like, the subject text will populate into the search box for you automatically.

• Use the lookup box to find matches for your text in the tree. You can lookup by subject code or literal. Matching subjects will be highlighted in the list, as shown with the example ‘adventurers’ in the image at left. Scrolling down the list will also show ‘adventurers’ highlighted in the (adult) Biography section.

• You can explore the subject tree to make your selections. use the +/- button to expand or collapse sections, and the checkbox to indicate your selections. For example, you can open the Non-fiction box, open the Cooking category, and make selections from the different styles of cooking, cookware, and other relevant subtopics.

• Selecting a subject that has subcategories will include all subcategories by default For example, selecting ‘GARDENING / Climatic’ automatically selects the subcategories Desert, General, Temperate, and Tropical. You can deselect one or more subcategories by unchecking the box next to the subcategories you wish to exclude.

To edit your subject selections, or to clear them without clearing the rest of the Advanced Search form, use the Add/Edit Subjects button to reopen the subject tree where you can modify or clear your selections.

The filters section includes two columns, one where you can limit results with simple opt-in checkboxes or, in the second column, you can set specific range parameters and multi-select criteria from the drop-down boxes.

Canadian Authors: Ticking the box next to this option will generate a result set that includes books by Canadian authors. A book will return if any contributor to the work is flagged as Canadian.

Favourite Publishers: This option only displays if you are logged in to CataList, and have set Favourite publishers or imprints. This limiter will

Added in the past [ ] days: The default for this is set to 2, but you can select as far back as 7, 15, or 30 days. This is calculated from the date a title is published into a public or trade-only catalogue in CataList. It also includes the current day; searching titles ‘added in the last two days’ will return titles added to CataList today and yesterday.

Publication Date: To set a date range, select from the dropdown: Before, After, and Between. This activates the calendar picker for the start date, end date, or both - depending on the range type you selected. Click on the calendar icon to open the picker to select a date.

Price range: You can set your filters to only return items within a certain price range. This filters on the Canadian retail price data point.

Format: Use the format limiters to return specific formats only. In addition to print formats, you can limit to ebook product, audio or non-book items like calendars or stationery items.

Audience: If you want to limit results to a particular audience, such as Juvenile or Young Adult, use the audience tool to select just the audiences you are looking for. Other options include All, General Trade, Education, Higher Education, Professional/Scholarly, ESL, and Adult Education.

Language: You can also pre-filter results based on the language of the text. The most common languages represented in CataList are at the top of the list (English, French, German, etc.), and indigenous languages are included in this list. The Multiple languages option returns items specifically flagged with a multiple language indicator. Books where, for instance, both French and English are indicated as languages in the text, will be returned if either French or English is selected.

There is also a new way in CataList to view your search results!

Use the icons at the top right of your search result items to select a preference for how CataList presents your search results. By default, you’ll have our standard scrolling view set. Simply click the grid view icon to switch your view. When you are logged in to CataList, the system will remember your last selection and will display future searches in your selected format.

Use the Show/Hide columns button to set the columns you want to see on this page. When you are logged in to CataList, the system will remember your column settings for future search results.

In grid view, you can also use the checkboxes in the first column to select and act on titles returned in your search. Again, you must be logged in to CataList to access this feature. Select all titles or specific titles, and send your selections to a custom catalogue or export them from the system.