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Museology Bibliography (BMUSE)
Tips for searching BMUSE
A. Simple search
1. Author search
2. Title search
3. Subject search
B. Advanced search
1. Author search for joint authors
2. Subject search with two subject boxes
3. Narrowing search by publication year
4. Narrowing search by language
5. Narrowing search by additonal fields
C. General tips
1. Sorting results
2. Saving records
3. Language of subject terms
4. Stem searching (truncation)
5. Contacting us
1. Author search
The "author" search will look for personal authors, editors, corporate authors
(institutions), credit and cast (for audiovisual materials).
Authors may be searched in two ways for both simple and advanced searches:
a) browsing the author index, and b) entering names directly in the Author search box.
a. Browse author index
Example 1: Personal author
To browse for works by Chandler Screven, click on "Browse author index" and enter "Screven"
in the search box. Click on the Begin search button.
A list of authors appears, beginning with the authors that matched your search criteria.
Select entries by clicking in the checkboxes to the left of the names.
Click on "View selected authors."
The list of all publications by this author in the database will display in the brief citation format.
To display the full citation for an item, click on the underlined title.
Example 2: Institution as author
To browse for works by the American Association of Museums, click on "Browse author index" and enter "American Association of Museums" in the search box. Click on the Begin search button.
A list of authors appears, beginning with those that matched your search criteria.
Select entries by clicking in the checkboxes to the left of the names.
Click on "View selected authors."
The list of all documents authored by the organization will display in the brief
citation format.
To display the full citation for an item, click on the underlined title.
b. Enter author’s name in search box
This method allows you to search for a personal or institutional author directly,
and to combine an author search with other field searches such as subject,
title or date of publication.
Example 1: Personal author
Enter the author’s last name in the "Last name" box or enter both last name and first initial.
Click on "Begin search."
A list of titles by this author is displayed, 50 records on each page.
Click in the box beside the citations you wish to select or on "Select all."
If necessary, click on the appropriate number to proceed to subsequent pages of the display.
Click on "View selected citations."
You may print or save these bibliographic records at this time. See Saving records (in "General Tips", below)
Example 2: Institution as author
Enter the institution name in the "Last name or institution name" box.
Follow the same procedures to display records as for a personal author.
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2. Title search
The default title search searches all of the title fields, i.e. the title of article
or chapter, title of source (journal or book), and the title of monographic series.
Click in the "Title (all titles)" search box and enter the complete title or
key words from the title. The more words you enter, the more precise the search
will be. The complete title is not required.
Alternatively, select one of the specific title fields from the drop-down menu
on the left: Title of source, title of article/chapter and title of series.
Search for words sharing a common root or stem by adding an asterisk (*)
after the root; for example, "exhibit*" will search for exhibit, exhibits,
exhibiting, exhibition, exhibitions, etc.
To make your search more precise, select "All words," "Any words" or "Exact phrase"
from the drop-down box to the right.
Example 1: "All words"
"All words" searches for all of the words entered in the title search box,
in any order (an AND search).
Example 2: "Any words"
"Any words" searches for any of the words entered in the box (an OR search).
This increases the number of records retrieved, and is seldom used for title searching.
Example 3: "Exact phrase"
"Exact phrase" searches for this exact sequence of words (adjacency searching).
This is the most precise type of search.
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3. Subject search with one subject box
The default subject search "Subjects (all subjects)" will look for subject terms in
titles, subject keywords and abstracts.
Both English and French subject terms may be accessed through the English or French
search screens. Note that ICOM has entered only English subject terms and CCI
has entered both English and French subject terms for all periodical records
and for bilingual books, but not for unilingual books.
Enter one or more words in the "Subject (all subjects)" box.
Select "All words," "Any words" or "Exact phrase" from the drop-down box to the right.
Example 1: "All words"
"All words" searches for all of the words entered in the subject search box,
in any order (an "AND" search). If you enter two words, each citation
retrieved will have both words somewhere in the bibliographic record--but not
necessarily in the same field.
Search for words sharing a common root or stem by adding an asterisk (*) after the root;
for example "exhibit*" will search for exhibit, exhibits, exhibiting, exhibition,
exhibitions, etc.
Example 2: "Any words"
"Any words" searches for any of the words entered in the box (an "OR" search).
This increases the number of records retrieved.
Example 3: "Exact phrase"
"Exact phrase" searches for this exact sequence of words (adjacency searching).
This is the most precise type of search.
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The advanced search screen may be used directly for an initial search, or to narrow
results after a simple search.
Click on the "Advanced search" link or on the "Refine/Advanced search" link at
the top of the page.
Author, title and subject searching functions in the same way in both
the "simple" and "advanced" search.
Narrowing results
The "Advanced search" permits you to search for works co-written by two authors.
It also allows searches to be narrowed by publication year and language, and offers
searches by very specific fields such as BMUSE number, volume number, issue number,
location of document, publisher, etc.
1. Author search for joint authors
Enter the last name and first initial in each Author search box.
Example:
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2. Subject search with two subject boxes
Select "Subject (all subjects)" for two search boxes using the drop-down lists.
This allows the subject to be narrowed quite precisely.
Select "AND," "OR," or "AND NOT" between the two subject boxes.
Example 1: Two subject boxes ("AND NOT")
This search will retrieve citations for works written about women in
museums but not those about science:
Example 2: Two subject boxes ("AND")
This will retrieve citations for works written about funding or grants with
reference to travelling exhibits.
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3. Narrowing by publication year
In the "Publication Year" search box, select
"later than or in", "in", "earlier than or in" or "not in".
Enter the year (4 characters) after making the selection.
Example:
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4. Narrowing by language
Enter the name of the language or languages (in English or French) in the
"Language of text" selection box. Separate multiple entries with spaces.
In this search box only, the space is automatically
interpreted as "or."
Example:
This will search for publications written in either English, French or German.
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5. Narrowing by additional search fields
Both the title and subject drop-down boxes allow for specific title and subject fields
to be searched. Here, for example, you could do a "Title of series" search
and/or a search by "Subject geog name -- English."
There are also two drop-down lists of specialized fields under "Language of text" and
"Volume number." Here you can search by location of document, bibliographic level,
issue number, BMUSE number, meeting name, etc. These may be used either for primary
searches or to narrow a search with a large number of results.
You may also search by "Category of museum," which is available in its own selection box.
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1. Sorting results
Search results are automatically sorted by date of publication in descending
order so that the most recent is displayed first. When no date of publication has
been entered ("n.d."), those records appear before those with a date. The sort
criteria may be changed according to a number of fields including author,
title of source, language, etc. The sort order may also be changed to ascending.
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2. Saving records
To save records without the embedded HTML codes, follow your Internet browser
instructions for saving. Normally you click on "File," then "Save as," then give
a file name (e.g. a:\demo.txt). You may save as many records as you have selected
from a search. Always name your file with a ".txt" extension, and select "plain text"
or "ASCII". Unfortunately some special characters such as accents may be lost during
the file conversion process.
You may also copy records from the display using the "Edit", "Copy" and "Paste" functions,
transferring the text from the BMUSE listing to an open word processing document.
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3. Language of subject terms
Both English and French subject terms may be accessed through the English or French
search screens. Note that ICOM has entered only English subject terms, DMF enters only
French subject terms, and CCI has entered both English and French subject terms for
all periodical records and for bilingual books, but not for unilingual books.
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4. Stem searching (truncation)
Use an asterisk (*) after as few as 2 characters to search the root and
any other letters which may follow (singular and plural, for example).
An asterisk may also be used to search for spelling variations in the middle of a word.
For example, "colour" and "color" can be searched using "col*r", retrieving citations
with British and American variations.
5. Contacting us
We hope that this introduction will get you started. Please contact us if you have
any questions or comments. Our e-mail address is service@chin.gc.ca.
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