Electronic Books (Ebooks)

Subjects included

WorldCat covers all subjects found in online electronic books.

Database details

Index labels and search examples

• You may type an index label with your search terms rather than a selection from the list of indexes to search on any search screen. The information you type overrides all default menu selections.
• Use a colon after an index label (as in au:wang) when you are not certain of your search terms.
• Use an equal sign after an index label (as in au=saint-arroman, august) for an exact match search.

The following may be sample rather than actual searches.

Refine search results

Refine your results by adding these labels to your search terms:

¹ For a list of library symbols, visit the Directory of OCLC members.

² For a list of library codes for the Number of Libraries index, see Number of library holdings.

Index use and structure

FirstSearch indexes and USE and STRUCTURE attributes used to access them:

Author Searches

Subject Heading Searches

Title Searches

Classification Numbers and Specific Searches*

Keyword search

The Keyword index for WorldCat uses attribute number 1016. The Keyword search finds information in the author, title, subject, notes, ISBN, year, year 2 and a few fields specific to the keyword search (034/a,b,d,e,f,g, 052/a,b, 255/a,b,c,d,e).

The Year and Year2 data is indexed exactly as those indexes index the 008 data (see below). The ISBN is indexed as the data is indexed, without hyphens. However, any keyword search term that meets the characteristics of an ISBN and is entered with hyphens will be automatically concatenated by the search processor.

A geographic field found only in the keyword indexes is 052/a,b. This is a field useful to map catalogers. The 052/a field is indexed alone. Any records containing 052/b also indexes as 052/a concatenated together with 052/b without spaces, as a single word. So, a record with 052 #a 1234 #b P4 #b C2 is searchable as 1234, 1234p4, and 1234c2.

Subject Indexes

The Subject searches have many options. The types of data have been broken down to allow specific searches, such as Geographic Coverage (58) and Genre/form (5655), Named Person (1009), Named Corporation (5610) and Named Conference (5611). The Descriptor search (5650) includes only topical information.

Library Holdings Group

The library holdings group (use attribute 5848) limits a search by the most widely held items. Try using a rangeable search, such as 08, which would include all items held by 100 libraries or more. Different types of material will have different high-end levels for searching. If you searching for highly technical material, 50 libraries holding the item would be a large number. However, serial records and very popular works can be found in the rare "most held" group31.
 

Access Method/Internet Resources

The most direct search of internet resources is the Access Method search (use 5856) which searches the URLs in some WorldCat records. The characters between the punctuation in the URL are the "words" that are searched for. For example, https://www.oclc.org is searched by the "words" www, OCLC, and org. The most distinct term in the string is the most useful on which to search. All the stopwords apply to this index, plus two additional stopwords, "http" and "https".
 

Known number indexes

ISBNs (use 7) remove and concatenate all punctuation including hyphens. However, a search can be entered with hyphens and get the appropriate ISBN records. Consider searching the ISBN using the Standard Number index (use 1007) instead of the ISBN only (use 7) index. The index with use 7 includes only data found in the 022 field, while the ISBNs for the electronic item are sometimes included in the 776/z field which is indexed with Standard Number (use 1007). To have all ISBNs included in the index use the Standard Number index. For both of these indexes, ISBNs can be successfully searched with or without hyphens.

LCCN or Library of Congress Control Numbers (use 9) have the numbers indexed without the hyphen. A user can search with the hyphen added or with the zero fill characters that is also used to store the number. So for example, sn92-1234 is indexed as sn921234 and 921234 and can be searched as 92-1234 or 92001234 or sn92-1234 or sn92001234.

The standard number index (use 1007) has ISBNs, LCCNs, and many other standard numbers. For all of these, all punctuation is removed and concatenated. For the LCCNs, only the stored number with the zeros is retained. Further, if there is an alphabetic prefix with three letters it is attached to the number. If there is an alphabetic prefix of one or two letters, it is not attached.
 

Update Index

The update index (1012) gives the date on the MARC record as the date last updated in the OCLC WorldCat Cataloging System in the format YYYYMMDD. Since, FirstSearch is a day or two behind the cataloging system, please take that into account. So, if a user searched on August 31, 2000 and wanted to retrieve only new or changed records a month later (October 1, 2000) the user would AND the previous search with the update index using "200009*". However, while this would retrieve all of September, to be complete the search "2000083*" would also need to be included.