Library of the Karl Marx House - Guidelines for Use

Basic Information:

The catalogue search engine is not case sensitive.
The following search categories are available: keyword, person, subject heading, person [about], title, organisation, place of publication/publishing house, ISBN number, ISSN number.
Search categories can be chosen via the arrow.
Several words, separated by spaces, may be entered into the "keyword" and "title" search fields. In the "person" search category, both first and last names of a person may be entered into the search field.
Hits exceeding 2,000 titles will not be displayed. In this case, modify or narrow the search parameters.
The catalogue search engine's default setting is a word stem, or truncated, search, i.e. it searches for the beginnings of words, e.g.: entering "book" searches for booklist, books, bookmark etc. By switching the search mode to "exact" the search engine only searches for the term entered.
The search engine is also set to AND operation as a default, i.e. all search words must appear in the search result. This search function can be switched to OR operation.
Example: In the AND operation setting, entering "Poland France" will yield all entries which contain both Poland and France. In the OR operation setting, entering the same two terms will yield titles which contain either both or only one of the two search words.

Switch the search category to "person" and enter the name in the search field.
You may either enter the name by "[first name] [last name]" or in inverted form, i.e. "[last name], [first name]". Naturally, you may only search for last names only, as well.
Example:
Josef Weik
Weik, Josef
Weik
Searching for an author by means of "[first name] [last name]" will also work in the "keyword" search category.
The same search strategy applies to editors, adapters and compilers.
If you want to search for literature about a certain person (e.g. biographies), please see "thematic search".

keep the search category set to "keyword" (this is the default) and enter title keywords
Example:
mdl baden
mountain talk
In the "title" search category titles must be entered in their exact form, omitting any articles at the beginning of the title. Often, therefore, the "keyword" search is more suitable.

Switch the search category to "ISBN number" or "ISSN number" and enter the number in the search field. Here, it is imperative that you enter the numbers with a - (hyphen), because titles cannot be found otherwise.

If you are searching for literature published by an organisation (i.e. a statutory corporation):

Switch the search category to "organisation". Enter either one word from the organisation's name or an abbreviation into the search field.

Furthermore, you can search for the place of publication or the publishing house. Usually, using this search category only makes sense in combination with other search parameters, e.g. if you want to find all the works that Willy Brandt published with Ullstein publishing house.
Thematic Search:

Literature about a certain person, e.g. biographies, can be found by means of the search category "person [about]".
In this case, enter the name as "[first name] [last name]" or "[last name], [first name]", just as when searching for an author.

Users can conduct a subject-related search, e.g. for foreign-language titles or unspecific titles (see also "keyword search") by means of the "subject heading search". Subject headings are short, standardised terms which reflect the content of the literature, often in a simplified manner.
Example for a combined search:
Enter "Festschrift der Arbeiterbewegung" in the 'subject heading' search category and "Steinberg" in the 'Keyword' search category.

If you have any further questions, please contact our lending/information department[Ausleihe/Information ], phone no. +49 (0) 228/883-426.