August in Catalyst

It’s August, so I’m thinking about August. Part of thinking about August is remembering all of the things to do to prepare for the upcoming semester, including playing with the new library catalog, Catalyst.

Do we have any books with the word august (capitalizing isn’t necessary) in the title? Wow, over 18,000. Guess that answers that question. (TITLE also searches any table of contents or list of stories included in the catalog record.)

In what languages are they written? Catalyst lists the languages from the most to the fewest — English, German, French, and Spanish are followed by 13 others, including seven in ancient Greek!

What’s the newest book with august in the title? Ah, a book about August Strindberg (1849-1912), the Swedish playwright and novelist. Oh, right — august can be somebody’s name, too.

What happens if I put august in as a SUBJECT word instead of a TITLE word? Big difference – only 1,429. The Strindberg book is the newest one of those, too.

Okay, let’s get away from Strindberg; I’m not really into Swedish drama. I like poetry, though; do we have any books of poetry about august?

Why, indeed we do: august in the TITLE and poetry in the SUBJECT finds 206. The most recent of those is The Apple Trees at Olema: New and Selected Poems.

That sounds nice; I’ll go and look at that one. But first, let’s see whether there’s any science fiction with the word “August” in the catalog record. Throw the words august “science fiction” into ANY FIELD and… 5 results! (Put quotation marks around words that you want to search as a single phrase, like “science fiction.”)

Wait a minute, where’s the word august in the last one (Dava Sobel’s The Planets)? Actually, it’s in a note at the bottom of the record telling me when Library Journal had indexed the book – this is because I left my search words in ANY FIELD, which really does mean ANY field.

Exploring Catalyst to see how it works is fun—try it out soon!