As many of you know, the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library is a UCLA library and, as such, our holdings are represented in the UCLA Library online catalog. Searching the catalog can tell you what resources UCLA’s many libraries and archives have for you to explore, peruse, and read.

The UCLA Library changed the interface for its online catalog at the end of January 2014. The new interface is pretty intuitive, but this post will help to guide you through using it, and other resources, to help you to find what you seek in the Clark Library collections.

First, go to the UCLA Library catalog. Either click on the “Advanced” tab or the “Set Other Search Limits” button in the lower right-hand corner of the search box.

Both of these will take you to the Advanced Search screen.  Here, you can limit your search in many ways, including by “Location.” In the Location menu, click on “Clark Library,” add your search terms in the search boxes above, then click “Search” at the bottom of the page.

Note that, in the search boxes, you can choose to search your terms in one of three ways: “all of these” is the default, but you can also choose “any of these” (e.g., only one of the words you’re searching need be in the record) or “as a phrase” (e.g., the results will only include the specific phrasing for which you’re searching).

You can also search across all fields, using “keyword anywhere” (the default) or you can limit your search to just the Title, Author Name, Subject, Publication Information, Publication Date, etc.

One additional note regarding the online catalog: If you’ve completed one search and you would like to maintain your “Clark Library” location limit, click on “Edit Search” to bring you back to the Advanced Search page, with the location limit still intact.

There are two additional sources that you can use to find what you seek within the Clark’s collections. The first is our collection of finding aids on the Online Archive of California (or, “OAC”). Here we post the descriptions of our archival materials, including manuscripts, correspondence, photographs, artwork, and other non-printed documents.

You can search within our page on OAC using the search box under “Find a collection at this institution” feature just below our address. You can also browse the finding aids, which are listed in alphabetical order in the right-hand column.

The third resource is our card catalog.

We indeed still have a card catalog, conveniently located in the foyer to the library’s Reading Room. During the process in which our catalog cards were converted into digital data and added to the UCLA Library online catalog, a number of records were inadvertently lost. The card catalog thus contains records of materials that are not in our online catalog and continues to be an essential searching tool.

We encourage our readers to let us know when they find materials in the card catalog, but not in the online catalog, so that we can add the missed records into the latter. But those interested in doing research at the Clark should be prepared to search our holdings in the card catalog as well as the online catalog. And, of course, the Clark staff are always here to help.