The OPAC is Dobbs Ferry's Online Public Access Catalog. The
old-fashioned, card catalog is gone forever -- we are in the computerized information age!
But the OPAC doesn't bite, and it can be fun to use. Read along and see how.
You can do all kinds of searches with the OPAC, but the
most common ones are Title, Author and Subject. The Opening Screen will have buttons on a tool bar at the top
of the page for those three and also for the Call Number, Keywords, Series, and Power Search.
The ones we will learn about here are Title,
Author, Subject, and Keyword.
Title
To do a title search, type in the title, or the first
part of the title. Leave off beginning words if they are A, AND, or THE.
Click the Title Button. 
Click OK.
Now you will see a list of titles. A little red
book to the left means that the item is a book. A number to the left means how many
items we have of that title. A tape reel to the left means it is an audiovisual
item. Only teachers can have those.
Next to a single title you should see the TITLE, then the
AUTHOR, then the CALL NUMBER, and finally an IN or OUT (telling you whether the book is in
the library or not).
If your title is not highlighted, press the up or down
arrow key and press ENTER or doubleclick to choose one of the books.
Now you should see the whole catalog record for your
title. The CALL NUMBER should be in the lower LEFT hand corner. You can read more
about the book in the NOTES field. It will tell you if the book has an index, or if
it is an accelerated reader book.
You can close these screens by clicking the X, pressing Escape, or
clicking the CLOSE button.
When you are finished, close all the windows to get back
to the opening screen. This is just the nice thing to do!
Author
To do an Author search, type in the Author's LAST
NAME, then a comma, then the Author's FIRST NAME.
Next, click the Author button. 
Now you will see a list of authors. If your author is not
highlighted, press the up or down arrow key to choose the one you want.
If the author has written more than one book, there will
be a number to the left of the name. Double-click on one of these authors, or click
SELECT.
Now you should see the list of books that your author
wrote. You can choose one of these books to look at just like in the Title
Search.
When you are finished, close the windows to get back to
the opening screen. This is just the nice thing to do!
Subject
To do a subject search, type in all or part of the
subject. You may not have to type all of it -- especially if you don't know how to
spell it!
Next, click the Subject Button. 
Now you will see a list of subjects. Librarians
call these subject headings. Each book in the library has
at least one subject heading, so you can find a book about each topic. If your
subject is not highlighted, press the up or down arrow key to choose the one you want.
On the far right of each subject
heading is a number. This is how many titles of items we have under that subject.
Choose one of these by double-clicking or click on SELECT.
Now you should see the list of books about your subject.
Use the arrow key to highlight the book you want to see
more about.
Now you should see the whole catalog record for your
title. The CALL NUMBER should be in the lower LEFT hand corner.
You can read the notes in the middle of the screen to see
if it is the book you wanted. It will also tell you if it has an index or not.
At the bottom of this screen, it will tell you if the
book is in the library. It either say, "IN," or "OUT."
When you are finished, close the windows to get back to
the opening screen. This is just the nice thing to do!
Keyword
To do a keyword search, type the word you are looking for
in the box.
Next, click the Keyword Button. 
You will now either see a list of SUBJECTS or a list of TITLES
where the keyword was found. You will see that the keyword is highlighted in BLUE.
Power Search
You can ask the computer to look in different places for
your keyword. You do this with a POWER search. To do a power search, you must
click the Power Button FIRST.
Type your keyword in the top box, and click the drop down
box to pick where you want to look (in the TITLE, SUBJECT, AUTHOR, NOTES, SUBJECTS,
SERIES)
If you want to look for more than one keyword, type a new
keyword in the second box. You can choose the field for that one, too.
Now here is where searching gets interesting! You
can LINK your search words (terms) with the words AND, OR, and NOT.
AND will find all items in the library that contain BOTH
of your keywords.
OR will find all items in the library that contain EITHER
one of your keywords, the other of your keywords, or BOTH of them together.
NOT will leave out any items with that keyword in it.
Try a couple of keywords and see what happens.
Click the SEARCH button.
Now you will see a list of subjects or titles. In
each one, the keywords you typed in will be highlighted in BLUE.
This page
courtesy of Ms. Melissa Gibson, Kentucky Virtual Library. Used by permission.
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