Fairfax County Public School's new library catalog is easy for students to use. Since it is accessed via the Internet, you can use this online catalog at home as well as at school. The address is Fairfax County Schools Library Catalog. When you connect to the catalog from your school, the catalog will automatically search your school's holdings.

The general layout of the catalog probably looks similar to Internet search engines that you have used - with data well into which you type search terms, and search buttons that you click to submit the search.

A data well that you will see on this main page is one in which you can select the Fairfax County Public School library you want to search. If you'd like to search the holdings of other school libraries, you may indicate that by selecting the school name from the dropdown menu that appears when you click on the small arrow to the right-hand side of the data well. "ALL" indicates all Fairfax County Public School Libraries, and "High School Libraries" allows you to see what all of the FCPS high schools hold.

When you are searching from home, you must indicate which library you want to search, or else you will search all Fairfax County Public School libraries.

Unicorn iBistro" is the product name of the software on which the library catalog is based. You may see these words appear on the catalog pages, but, most likely, the librarians in your school will simply refer to this as the "library catalog or online catalog."

There are two main types of searches: a Quick Search and a Power Search.

With the Quick Search, you may choose between a keyword search and a browse search. Most of the time, you may want to do keyword searches. Unless you select "browse"search, the catalog is automatically set to search in the keyword mode.

A keyword search looks for the word or phrase that you enter and displays a list of all of the catalog records that contain that word or phrase. A keyword search on "rings" as a title, would find the books Rings of Ice, as well as the Fellowship of the Rings.

If you were to use the same term in the browse search, you would only see an alphabetical list of book titles that begin with the word "rings."

The four search buttons that appear immediately below the space where you type in search terms allow you to specify what type of search you'd like to submit.

The subject button is the button that you should click if you've typed in a word or phrase that you'd like to find books about. A subject search for "rings", for example, would find a book about rings around planets.

The title button is the one you'd click if you've typed in a word or phrase that you think might be in a title. A title search for "rings" would find a book entitled, Make Your Own Rings & Other Things.

The author button is the one you'd click if you've typed in the name of a person or organization that has written materials that you'd like to find. An author search of the word "rings," for example, might find a video produced by an organization called "Freedom Rings."

The everything button searches all parts of the catalog record for the word that you've typed in. Using this same example of the search term "rings", and "everything search" will retrieve a long list of material that are about rings, or have "rings" in the title, or were written or produced by an author by the name of "Rings."

The Power Search allows a user to combine different types of searches, such as searching by author and title, and also allows search results to be limited by type and location. You choose the "Power Search" option by clicking on the pink tab from the main page.

On the Power Search screen, five data wells for search terms are available, For Example, enter the word "comic" in the first data well, and do an "everything" search on that word. The box on the right with the Boolean operator AND indicates that you want to combine the search term "comic" with whatever else is entered in other data wells. Using the dropdown box allows you to select the other Boolean Operators, OR or NOT. Put the word "biography" in the second data well, and use the dropdown box to do an "everything search" for that term. So in this case you're looking for catalog records that contain the word "comic" AND the word "biography."

On the Power search screen you can also specify which library you want to search and what type of material that you'd like the catalog to search for by using the dropdown boxes.

The new catalog enables you to either print or email a list of all the records that you've designated as "keepers". To "keep" items, you simply mark the checkbox that is found to the left of the record on a hit list. After selecting titles, click on the Keeper's icon at the top of the page.

When the "Keepers" menu loads, you can choose how you want the list of items arranged, such as alphabetical by title, or alphabetical by author's name. You can also indicate if you want materials from all libraries to be included, or just from one that you specify. If you choose to email the list, there is a field into which you type your complete email address. When the list of titles has been successfully emailed to your address, the catalog displays the message, "Search results were mailed."

The mission of the library media program is to ensure that students and staff are effective users of ideas and information. The mission is accomplished:

• by providing intellectual and physical access to materials in all formats.
• by providing instruction to foster competence and stimulate interest in reading, viewing, and using information and ideas.
• by working with other educators to design learning strategies to meet the needs of individual students.

Interesting Links: