Katalog plus (Catalog plus)

Katalog plus consists of two separate areas: "Books & more" and "Articles & more".

• In "Books & more", all books, journals, e-books, e-journals and other items of the University of Stuttgart Library and of more than 116 decentralized libraries of the University of Stuttgart are listed. In addition, the data of e-books from the national licenses as well as license-free electronic resources are being included.
  In this area you will find hardly any article data, but complete information on journal titles.
  The area is linked to the circulation system, so that the availability can be queried and the loan status can be displayed directly in the catalog. 
• In "Articles & more" you can find articles that have been licensed by the University Library or the decentralized libraries of the University of Stuttgart in electronic form, have been acquired as print item, or are freely available online. The hits in "Articles & more" come from a so-called „global index“.
  The EDS-Index of the EBSCO company contains listings of several hundred million articles from journals, newspapers, books, and the like (including listings from most national licenses), as well as all databases licensed under EBSCOhost. In the Simple/Free Text Search, many sources are searched down to the full text level.
  The hits are sorted by relevance, but can also be re-sorted by date. 

However, not all articles available in the University Library and the decentralized libraries of the University of Stuttgart can be searched via "Articles & more". Therefore, an additional search in subject-specific and interdisciplinary databases via the Database Info System DBIS is recommended.

Why the separation?

In the EDS Index, EBSCO has combined numerous, very different data sources, thus enabling a large set of search results. This is only possible by using the lowest common denominator of the data, so-to-speak, as basis for a content scheme. The local index, however, holds the data in a very finely itemized category scheme which could not be harmonized with the coarser scheme of the EDS Index without considerable losses. For this reason, both areas are not merged, but exist side by side. In order to ensure a higher search comfort nevertheless, search queries are carried out in both areas in parallel.

Log in to

• request items from the closed stacks or to the other University Library location,
• place a hold on checked out items,
• read and search licensed electronic items,
• and to be able to use further features of Katalog plus.

You can log in via a link at the top right in Katalog plus using your University Library user code. You will thereby be recognized by the system as an authorized user of the University Library.

In the "Articles & more" area, Katalog plus allows the search for articles. After logging in, you can in many cases access the electronic document licensed by the University in full text directly from your catalog query. For licensing reasons, many documents and often even the corresponding meta data are only available to members of the University.
Another advantage of the personal login in Katalog plus is the possibility to save search results and lists for later use.

• Regardless of which of the two areas, "Books & more" or "Articles & more", you search, Katalog plus always carries out a parallel search in both areas during a „Simple Search“.
• Via the tabs, you can see the number of hits in each area and can switch between areas at will.
• The filters set via the „Narrow search“ feature cannot be transferred to the other area as the indexes differ too much structurally.

Katalog plus offers two entries for the search in both areas, "Books & more" and "Articles & more": 

• a „Simple Search“ as a standard entry with a „one field search“ (comparable to Internet search engines). Most data fields are searched. On the one hand, this allows a search on a broad data basis, on the other hand, it can quickly lead to large and inaccurate sets of hits. The more terms you put in, the smaller the set of hits will be because all of your search terms must be contained in the searched data.
• an „Advanced Search“ for specific search entries (e.g. author) or for the search with location-specific search criteria (e.g. call number = location information of a book) 

After each search, the additional features common for search engines are available for subsequently limiting the search result (often named „drilldowns“ or „facets“). Using them, the search result can, for example, quickly be limited by year and/or person.

Both areas of Katalog plus have almost identical search forms. There are only some variations due to the different data basis of the evaluated data:

• in the "Books & more" area, for example, the subject headings are standardized in German,
• whereas the subject headings in the "Articles & more" area are predominantly in English due to the data origin.

Therefore, please also include German terms in your search.

Help texts for the individual input fields are automatically displayed in the right-hand area as soon as you place the cursor in the corresponding field.

Due to the large structural differences of the data in the various data sources, both the subject headings and the names of persons are not standardized in the "Articles & more" area. This concerns, for example

• forms of names with or without abbreviated first names,
• spellings with or without dissolved umlauts etc.

For an efficient search, you should therefore also include different spellings as well as synonyms. If necessary, also use subject headings in a different language.

Truncation
With the help of the so-called truncation you can increase your set of hits.

• the truncation characters * and ? replace letters or sequences of letters.
• the truncation character ? replaces exactly one letter (e.g. Tos?ana).
• the truncation character * replaces any number of characters, e.g. „histor*“ returns hits for „historisch“, „historisierend”, „history, or „historical“.

Search terms can be truncated in all fields at the end or in the middle. Truncation at the beginning is not possible.

Truncation can be helpful in following cases:

• when searching for persons:  In the "Articles & more" area, first names of authors, for example, are not treated consistently. As the first given name is abbreviated in some of the evaluated data sources, but not in others, it is recommended to search the first given name truncated after the first letter in general (e.g. Smith, H*).
• for the simultaneous search for both female and male forms as well singular and plural forms (e.g. bacteri* searches for bacterium, bacteria or, e.g. in German, Astronaut* searches for Astronaut, Astronautin, Astronauten, Astronautinnen)
• for topics whose core terms have central roots, e.g. biolog* for Biologie, biologisch, biology, or biological.

Index Feature
The „Advanced Search“ in the "Books & more" area has an index feature in the search fields

• Persons
• Subject Headings
• Corporate Name.

This will display all entries that begin with the letter sequence of the entered search term. With the help of the index of persons, for example, persons of the same name can be distinguished by their dates of birth and death. If the exact spelling of the names of persons or corporations, or the standardized subject headings is not known, the search in the index can help. For technical reasons, the index feature is unfortunately not available for "Articles & more".

Phrase Search
A phrase search allows the search for an exact sequence of letters, e.g. „Naher Osten“.

A phrase search is possible in all fields of the Simple and Advanced Search. In a phrase search, two or more search terms are entered into the search field using quotation marks. The search will only return hits then in which the search term occurs in that exact word order, e.g. in the title. You can also combine a phrase with another search term, e.g.: Poe „Black Cat“. However, truncation is not possible within a phrase.
In the "Books & more" area, using the field „Exact Title“ in the Advanced Search carries out a phrase search in the title. It is not necessary to use quotation marks in this field. Use this field, for example, to search specifically for journals whose titles you know, which cover a wide range of topics, though, e.g. „Pädagogik“ or „Science“.

The data in the "Books & more" area is updated daily. Unfortunately, no general statement can be made for the "Articles & more" area because the update frequency depends on the respective data source.