The big day has arrived and we’ve gone live with our new online catalog and discovery tool, Catalyst!  You can access the new system from either library’s website (Carleton Library | St. Olaf Libraries). You may notice a few quirks or hiccups as we work through issues related to the roll-out.  Please let us know if you see something that doesn’t seem right.

We’re excited to have our new system in place. The basic functionality, however has not changed: you can still search for all of our materials and find the best way to access them using Catalyst.

Top 5 things to know about Catalyst:

5. Results of a search are combined into one list.

This may be the first and most obvious change that you’ll notice. Previously, we’d split the results of a search to have “Books and more” results in one list on the left and “Articles and more” on the right. We now give you all the results in one list. You can narrow your results in many different ways using the options on the left side of the results page.

[Screen shot of some of the filters along the left side of the Catalyst results page]

4. “Everything” vs “Local Catalog” vs “Course Reserves”

At the beginning of your search, you can choose to search “Everything”, “Local Catalog” or “Course Reserves”

[Screen shot of the Catalyst search interface showing the options to search “Everything”, “Local Catalog”, or “Course Reserves”]

• Everything: includes articles, books, movies, images, and more.  This gives you the broadest search with the most results.
• Local Catalog: records of items in the Carleton and St. Olaf libraries. Close to a traditional library catalog, it includes the items the libraries have selected for the collection: books, e-books, movies, journal titles, and government documents.  It will not find articles or other content from databases that we subscribe to.
• Course Reserves: exactly what you’d think! Use this to search for course materials that faculty have put on reserve for a specific course.

3. Find books at your library

1. Start by clicking on “Local Catalog” to search for books, dvds, journal titles, and other items at the library.
2. Enter your search terms
   

   [Screen shot of the Catalyst search form with “Local Catalog” selected]

3. From the results screen, click “Library” along the left side of the screen to choose your preferred library.
   

   [screen shot of Catalyst filter to narrow results to those at a particular library]

2. The interface will change throughout the summer

There will be a major upgrade happening in August which will change how the interface looks. We’ll also be working throughout the summer on ways to make Catalyst work better for you, so that it’s at its best for Fall term.  If you see anything that looks wrong, please let us know.

1. We are here to help! 

If you have any questions or run in to any problems at all, please don’t hesitate to contact us (Carleton/St. Olaf or use the form on the right side of this page).