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Chetham's Library OPAC has been online since November 2000. The catalogue runs on Geac Computers' GeoWeb http interface to a Geac Advance catalogue.
Please also note that you will need to make an appointment in order to consult library materials.
If you want to search for archival and manuscript material, please go to the Introduction to Chetham's Manuscripts for an overview, or to the searchable Handlist of Manuscripts to look for specific terms.
Coverage: The online catalogue currently represents the preponderance of the Library's complete holdings. There is still some material not represented in the online system, however, so if you do not find what you are looking for here, please contact Library staff by email, or write or phone using our contact details. If you find works you would like to see, please get in touch with us at the same addresses so that we can arrange a time for you to come to read.
Call numbers (shelfmarks, pressmarks): In most cases the call number (some libraries call them pressmarks or shelfmarks) of the work you want to consult will appear at the bottom of the detailed record view. When contacting the library to ask for a work, please provide us with the author (if any), the first few words of the title and the call number. There are still a few hundred catalogue records without call numbers, however, and these will appear with a message that the Library holds no copies of the works concerned. Please ignore this and contact us if you would like to see the item concerned. This problem will gradually disappear as we are able to add location details.
Help on using the catalogue: Once you have logged in to the Catalogue, GeoWeb Help is available via a button on the left hand side of the screen. There are three main indexes, author, title and subject, and two main kinds of search: Browse, which provides a scrollable alphabetised view of the index concerned starting at the leftmost character (excluding articles in the title index); and Keyword, which allows searching for a particular word or set of words (right truncatable with the ? character) at any point in the index. You can combine keywords from different indexes by using the Advanced button in the keyword search screen, and in the same screen you can set search limits to restrict your query by publication date, language, or material type. You can also mark selected records and email them back to yourself for future use. Some more searches are detailed below.
Special searches on Chetham's Catalogue: In addition to the familiar Browse and Keyword searches for authors, titles and subjects, Chetham's Library OPAC provides some additional functionality in its cataloguing of works printed prior to 1801:
Binding and Provenance information: Bindings of interest, and significant features showing provenance and ownership history have been indexed using terms drawn from the RBMS Thesauri for use in rare books and special collections cataloging. These terms can be browsed or keyword searched from the Subject index of the catalogue. Examples of such terms include:
Blind tooled bindings (Binding) -- England -- Winchester -- 15th century
Inscriptions (Provenance) -- Belgium -- Louvain -- 17th century
Additional name searches: In addition to these index terms, the names of printers, booksellers, binders and former owners of works have been entered into the author index where identifiable. They can be browsed or searched by keyword in the same way as other entries in the author index.
Place of publication index: From September 2001 the Place of publication index is now available in addition to the author, title and subject indexes. It is organised alphabetically and hierarchically in the order [Modern Country name] -- [Modern Town or city name]. You can browse or keyword search it like the other indexes, and when using keywords you can apply date or language limits as mentioned above: thus a keyword search under 'Paris' in this index, date limited to 1540-1601 and language limited to Latin would provide a list of works published at Paris within the years 1540-1601 inclusive and in, or mainly in the Latin language. The names of countries and of towns and cities follow modern English language usage. If a particular keyworded name does not provide the expected results, please browse the index.
Please email any opinions or reports of problems in using this service to the System Operator.
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