Explore the British Library: Results

EXPLORE THE BRITISH LIBRARY:
RESULTS
http://explore.bl.uk
Results
Your results are displayed immediately below your search term. If you have searched in the
‘Main catalogue’ tab you will see catalogue records of items in the Library’s collection that
match your search term:
If you have searched in the ‘Our website’ tab you will see records for British Library web
pages that match your search term:
If you have searched in the ‘Explore further’ tab you will see records of scholarly items that
match your search term:
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There are a number of actions you can take once you have a list of results:
 Refine your results / show only
 Sort your results
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Browse or jump between pages of your results
View more details about the item
Keep a record of the item
View related resources/all versions
Add Notes or Tags
View citations (‘Explore further’ only)
View recommendations (‘Explore further’ only)
Order the printed item a copy or view the online item
Refine
Unless you have done a very specific search, you will probably get a number of items in
your results list. You may want to reduce these. In most cases, there’s no need to carry out
a new search you can use Refine to narrow down your results. The Refine options are on
the left-hand side of your screen, and will differ depending in which tab you have searched:
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There are a number of Refine choices available:
Access Options (only
seen after a search of
the ‘Main catalogue’)
Material type
Author/Contributor
Subject
Creation date
Language (not seen in
results from ‘our
website’)
Publisher
Genre Options (only
seen after a search of
the ‘Main catalogue’)
Journal Title Options
(only seen after a search
of the ‘Main catalogue’)
Additional Features
(only seen after a search
of the ‘Main catalogue’)
Collection (only seen
after a search of
‘Explore further’)
Useful if you are only interested in items you access in a
particular way – for example, online only.
Useful if you’re only interested in a particular type of
material, for example, books.
This includes editors.
In the ‘Main catalogue’ this is most useful for items
published within the last 30 years or so. NB: Earlier records,
in the main, will not include subject information.
Usually publication date.
Useful if you’re interested in books specific languages.
Please note: this information is not available in all item
records, so you will often see the term Unspecified.
Useful if you want to limit your search to a particular
publisher.
This information is not available for all item records.
Only relevant for Article records.
Useful if you want to limit your search to article records with
or without an abstract.
Limit to records from a particular collection.
Not all of the refinements in each list are displayed. Where more refinements are available
you can expand the list:
A Refine futher link enables you to combine (Include) or remove (Exclude) refinements:
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The refinements available display; use the check boxes to Include / Exclude refinements.
When you’ve made your selection, click the Continue button at the foot of the pop-up
(you may need to scroll to see this):
Note: Refinement options are generated by the records found as a result of your search
terms; different options will display for different search terms.
Show only
If you search ‘Explore further’ two additional options for reducing the number of results are
available, immediately above the Refine options:
If you select ‘Full text online’ you will only see those records where full text is available
online. Selecting this refinement removes those records with no access to full text.
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Note: The access to full text may be due to a Library subscription, in which case the content
can only be viewed by registered Readers using the Library’s PCs in our Reading Rooms.
If you select 'Peer-reviewed Journals' you remove all journals that are not peer-reviewed.
How do I know which terms I’ve used to refine my results?
As you refine by the different options, you will see your refinements appear in a coloured
bar above your results list:
You can keep refining until you get the number of results you want.
How do I delete these refinements?
Click on the red cross
next to any of the refinements to remove them. You can remove
any refinement at any time, regardless of the order in which you added them. This will
change your results set. To get back to your original search results, simply remove all the
refinements.
Sort results
The default sort is to sort by relevance but there are other sort options available to you.
Additionally, you can sort by:
 Date- newest
 Date-oldest
 Title
 Author
To change the order in which your results are sorted, click the down arrow at the side of
Sorted by relevance:
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Note: Sorts are ‘sticky’; if you have chosen to re-sort your results by title, for example,
when you carry out your next search this too will be sorted by title unless you re-select a
different sort.
Note: The rules governing grouping of related resources in a results list can adversely affect
the date sorting of a list of results.
Browse or jump between pages of your results
Unless you have done a very specific search, you will probably get a number of items in
your results list:
Use the numbers and Previous and Next links above and to the right of your results to
browse or jump through your results.
Details
Once you’ve found the record for the item you want to look at, you can get more details
by clicking on the Details tab below the record:
This opens up a panel beneath the record:
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This panel stays open until you close it by clicking on the Details tab again. You can open
up the panel for as many items as you want on your results list.
There are a number of underlined, linked, fields in the Details. If you click on any of them,
a different set of results is generated, e.g. click on Dewey: 823.8 and all records with this
Dewy number are displayed.
You may need to scroll to view all the record details in the tab, or you can open the tab by
clicking the open new window icon in the top right-hand corner:
Towards the foot of the information you will see the shelfmark; this tells you where the
item is located. The item may be located on the shelves in the reading room and many such
items will have a shelfmark that denotes this:
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Note: If you click on an Author link the Author index is triggered and the catalogue retains
this index for future searches. To remove this index, you must click on Explore Home in
the navigation bar, below the banner.
What else can I do from the Details panel?
If you search the ‘Main catalogue’, you may find a number of Links on the right-hand side
of the Details tab:
The links seen will depend on the record viewed. You may see links to:
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Table of contents
Some records contain links to Library of Congress Table of contents.
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Additional information
In some cases, for more modern material, you can see additional information about
an item, for example, an abstract, a table of contents, or a summary:
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Copac and WorldCat®
See the item in these union catalogues
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Amazon
You can check availability at Amazon.co.uk
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Report Catalogue Error
Use this form to report errors in the record’s details. Use the Feedback link in the
catalogue’s navigation bar, below the banner, for all other feedback
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MARC display
MAchine-Readable Cataloguing record.
Some records contain links to related records; Click the link(s) to view the related record(s):
Audio records may contain links that allow registered readers (using Library PCs in our
Reading Rooms) to play the item:
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Some map records contain links to an image of the map:
Other map records contain link to the record of the item in which the map can be found.
If you search ‘Explore further’ the Details tab will normally display a link to the full text, or
to the record on the publisher’s website, from where the full text may be available:
Keep a record of the item
You can add an item to My workspace. If you are a logged in registered reader or
document supply customer, items will be stored until you delete them. For guest users, the
items will be stored until you end your session.
Note: When a registered reader pass expires any information saved in a reader’s workspace
is automatically deleted. There is no means of reinstating this information. Readers should
ensure they renew their reader pass before it expires if they have items in their workspace
that they wish to keep.
To add one item, click on the star alongside the brief details in the results list:
The star turns orange once the item has been added.
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Alternatively, click the Details tab, then Send to in the right-hand corner of the panel and
choose Add to My workspace:
If you want to add more than one record at a time you can add all the records displayed on
the page you are viewing; click the Add results page to my workspace link on the left of
the screen, above the Refine options:
You can email the record to yourself
Click on the Details tab, choose Send to, in the right-hand corner of the panel, choose Email and then follow the on screen instructions.
You can print out the record
Click on the Details tab, choose Send to, in the right-hand corner of the panel, and then
choose Print. The record will print in the following format:
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Note: User-submitted notes for an item will not print out.
You can add the record to a social bookmarking site
Click on the Details tab and choose Send to in the right hand corner of the panel. You will
see the available options:
Then post to a site of your choice.
View related resources/ all versions
If you search the ‘Main catalogue’ related works are grouped together in your results list:
Sometimes it is difficult to understand the relationship; the rules governing this grouping
need further refinement. This functionality can also adversely affect the date sorting of a list
of results.
Click on the related resources link to see the details of the items:
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Related resources is a refinement; remove it to go back to your previous results list:
‘Explore further’ contains records from many different publishers and database vendors.
Different publisher/vendor records for the same time are grouped together:
To see all records, click View all versions:
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Sometimes only one record may display, the record seen in the results list. This is because
the Library has included only records in collections that are freely available or to which the
Library subscribes, not all the collections available. The 'View all versions' link appears
where there are versions in other collections regardless of whether we have included these
collections.
View citations
Some records found after a search of ‘Explore further’ include a ‘Times cited’ tab:
If you click this tab you will either see information from Scopus on other articles that cite
the article in your results:
Or you will see citation information from Web of Science:
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View recommendations
Some records found after a search of ‘Explore further’ include a list of recommended
articles in the ‘I want this’ tab:
You can open the tab in a new window by clicking on the icon in the top-right corner of
the tab, or scroll to see the recommended articles. The first 10 display but there is an option
to view more:
You can select a recommendation and then save the citation.
Note: Currently you can only save to Refworks.
If the recommended article is not hyperlinked the Library does not have access to the
electronic content; if it is we do. Freely available content can be viewed by all, subsrcibed
content can be viewed by registered Readers using the Library’s PCs in our Reading Rooms.
Click on the linked article to view.
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