Using Library Research Methods And Catalogs As A Supplement To AED And Book Collecting
- by Julie Carleton
The Female Volunteer; or the Life, Wonderful Adventures and Miraculous Escapes of Miss Eliza Allen ... of Eastport, Maine. Æ Database: Sabin5411
The Basics of Searching Library Catalogs
Let’s use the Library of Congress as an example library database. At the home page (http://catalog.loc.gov), select “basic search”. This screen brings up the option to search by title, author/creator, subject, call number, LCCN, command keyword
and keyword. For the sake of simplicity, we will focus on title, author/creator, subject and keyword. You will also notice that below the search area is an explanation of each search term. Remember, library catalogs are supposed to be easy to no matter what your computer or library expertise.
Title
If you have an idea of a title, or know of an exact title, enter it here. You can drop any initial the’s , an’s or a’s. You can also drop the last few words of the title, as the catalog will bring back an alphabetized list of titles either way. For example, if I wanted to look up the title, The Female Volunteer; or the Life and Wonderful Adventures of Miss Eliza Allen, A young Lady of Eastport, Maine, I would enter only: Female Volunteer; or the Life and Wonderful Adventures of Miss Eliza Allen, A young Lady of Eastport, Maine. After entering this title, I get one record.
When going into the actual library record, you can select either “brief record” or “full record”. Since you want all of the information that you can get, I’d suggest that you always select full display. In the full record, I can see many different things about the book: Personal Name, Main Title, Publish Date, and Subjects.Personal Name is helpful, as this will show that “official name” of the author, if you are unsure. Main Title and Publish Date are also valuable pieces of information. Subjects comes in handy when you need to know what the book is really about. For example, with this particular title, the subject, Young Women--Fiction is displayed. Bingo. So, now I know that this book really does not fall into my subject, as it a work of fiction, rather than a non-fiction travel narrative.
Author/Creator
Let’s say that you want to look up every book by one particular author. Using the Author/Creator option, you can do just that. In addition, this can help you to determine an “official” (otherwise known as "uniform") name for an author. I will use Mrs. Henry Beck as an example. After plugging in this name into Author/Creator and getting no results, I decide to do a title search to see if this book is even in the Library of Congress catalog. Yes, I find out the Library does hold this title, but the author that they use is “Beck, Henry Harrison, Mrs., b. 1861.” So, knowing the author’s name used in the Library of Congress’s catalog, I can now go back and see how many books they have of hers that might be of interest to me. Another handy piece of information is that the author field in library of catalogs usually displays the birth (and death, if applicable) dates of an author. Thus, I know now that Mrs. Henry Harrison Beck was born in 1861.
Freeman’s | Hindman Western Manuscripts and Miniatures July 8, 2025
Freeman’s | Hindman Western Manuscripts and Miniatures July 8, 2025
Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. FRANCESCO PETRARCH (b. Arezzo, 20 July 1304; d. Arqua Petrarca, 19 July 1374). $20,000-30,000.
Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. CIRCLE OF THE MASTER OF THE VITAE IMPERATORUM (active Milan, 1431-1459). $15,000-20,000.
Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. CIRCLE OF ATTAVANTE DEGLI ATTAVANTI (GABRIELLO DI VANTE) (active Florence, c. 1452-c. 1520/25). $15,000-20,000.
Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. FOLLOWER OF HERMAN SCHEERE (active London, c. 1405-1425). $15,000-20,000.
Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. An exceptionally rare, illuminated music leaf from a Mozarabic Antiphonal with sister leaves mostly in museum collections. $11,500-14,000.
Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. Exceptional leaf from a prestigious Antiphonary by a leading illuminator of the late Duecento. $11,500-14,000.
Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. CIRCLE OF THE MASTER OF MS REID 33 and SELWERD ABBEY SCRIPTORIUM (AGNES MARTINI?) (active The Netherlands, Groningen, c. 1468-1510). $10,000-15,000.
Freeman’s | Hindman, July 8. Previously unknown illumination from one of the most renowned Gothic Choir Book sets of the Middle Ages. $6,000-8,000.
Forum Auctions Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper 17th July 2025
Forum Auctions Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper 17th July 2025
Forum, July 17: Lucianus Samosatensis. Dialogoi, editio princeps, second issue, Florence, Laurentius Francisci de Alopa, 1496. £10,000 to £15,000.
Forum, July 17: Boccaccio (Giovanni). Il Decamerone, Florence, Philippo di Giunta, 1516. £10,000 to £15,000.
Forum, July 17: Henry VII (King) & Philip the Fair (Duke of Burgundy). [Intercursus Magnus], [Commercial and Political Treaty between Henry VII and Philip Duke of Burgundy], manuscript copy in Latin, original vellum, 1499. £8,000 to £12,000.
Forum, July 17: Bible, English. The Holy Bible, Conteyning the Old Testament, and the New, Robert Barker, 1613. £4,000 to £6,000.
Forum, July 17: Bond (Michael). A Bear Called Paddington, first edition, signed presentation inscription from the author, 1958. £4,000 to £6,000.
Forum Auctions Fine Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper 17th July 2025
Forum, July 17: Yeats (William Butler). The Secret Rose, first edition, with extensive autograph corrections, additions and amendments by the author for a new edition, 1897. £6,000 to £8,000.
Forum, July 17: Byron (George Gordon Noel, Lord). Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, bound in dark green morocco elaborately tooled in gilt and with 3 watercolours to fore-edge, by Fazakerley of Liverpool, 1841. £4,000 to £6,000.
Forum, July 17: Miró (Juan), Wassily Kandinsky, John Buckland-Wright, Stanley William Hayter and others.- Spender (Stephen). Fraternity, one of 101 copies, with signed engravings by 9 artists. £6,000 to £8,000.
Forum, July 17: Sowerby (George Brettingham). Album comprising 22 leaves of original watercolour drawings of fossil remains of Cheltenham and Vicinity, [c.1840]. £6,000 to £8,000.
Forum, July 17: Mathematics.- Blue paper copy.- Euclid. De gli Elementi, Urbino, Appresso Domenico Frisolino, 1575. £12,000 to £18,000.
Sotheby’s Books, Manuscripts and Music from Medieval to Modern Now through July 10, 2025
Sotheby’s Books, Manuscripts and Music from Medieval to Modern Now through July 10, 2025
Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: Book of Hours by the Masters of Otto van Moerdrecht, Use of Sarum, in Latin, Southern Netherlands (Bruges), c.1450. £20,000 to £30,000.
Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: Albert Einstein. Autograph letter signed, to Attilio Palatino, on his research into General Relativity, 12 May 1929. £12,000 to £18,000.
Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: John Gould. The Birds of Europe, [1832-] 1837, 5 volumes, contemporary half morocco, subscriber’s copy. £40,000 to £60,000.
Sotheby’s Books, Manuscripts and Music from Medieval to Modern Now through July 10, 2025
Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: Ian Fleming. A collection of James Bond first editions, 8 volumes in all. £8,000 to £12,000.
Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, 1997, first edition, hardback issue. £50,000 to £70,000.
Sotheby’s, Ending July 10: J.R.R. Tolkien. Autograph letter signed, to Amy Ronald, on Pauline Baynes's map of Middle Earth, 1970. £7,000 to £10,000.
DOYLE, July 23: STOKES, I. N. PHELPS. The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498-1909. New York: Robert H. Dodd, 1915-28. Estimate: $3,000-5,000
DOYLE, July 23: [AUTOGRAPH - US PRESIDENT]FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT. A signed photograph of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Estimate $500-800
DOYLE, July 23: [ARION PRESS]. ABBOTT, EDWIN A. Flatland. A Romance of Many Dimensions. San Francisco, 1980. Estimate $2,000-3,000.
DOYLE, July 23: TOLSTOY, LYOF N. and NATHAN HASKELL DOLE, translator. Anna Karénina ... in eight parts. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., [1886]. Estimate: $400-600
DOYLE, July 23: ROWLING, J.K. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. London: Bloomsbury, 2000. Estimate $1,200-1,800