Using CATNYP, the Research Library's Online Catalog

CATNYP represents the non-circulating collections of The Research Libraries of The New York Public Library. Included are books, scores, maps, microfilm, periodicals, music, prints, photographs, manuscripts, and many other materials.

Please note that some items received before 1972 may not be in CATNYP. Many of these items may be located by using the Dictionary Catalog of the Research Libraries, or various finding aids in the Special Collection divisions.

Tips for Searching CATNYP:

Author
Title
Subject
Word (Keyword)
     Boolean Operators
     Truncation and Wildcards
     Fields
     Search Limits: Pre-Search
Search Limits: Post-Search
Saving Your Results

In all searches, remember that punctuation and capitalization are not necessary. You may also truncate search terms with an asterisk * to retrieve multiple forms of a search term.

Author

Always enter last name first when performing an author search.
If you are unsure of the spelling, enter the first few letters of the author's last name only. You may then browse to find the correct entry.
You may also search for an organizational or corporate author.

Examples: shakespeare, william
shakespeare
united nations

Title

Omit introductory articles (a, an, the).
If you are unsure of the title, you may enter the first few words, and then browse for the correct entry.

Examples: gone with the wind
sun also rises
sun also

Subject

Searches assigned Library of Congress subject headings.
If you are not certain of the correct subject heading, you may wish to perform a word search first, and then check for subject headings.

Examples: sports medicine
wilde oscar
new york state history

Word (Keyword)

The order of words matters. Multiple words are searched together as one phrase.
If the phrase search yields no results, CATNYP automatically retries the search with AND between the words.
Use Boolean operators (AND, OR, AND NOT) to override phrase searching.

Examples: constructivism
wedding customs
new testament criticism

Boolean operators

Use AND or OR to search the words in any order.
Use AND NOT to exclude words.
Use parentheses () to group words together when using more than one operator.

Examples: (byron or shelley) and romanticism
dakota and not (north or south)

Use NEAR to find words in any order within 10 words of each other.
Use WITHIN# to specify a smaller distance.

Examples: internet near security
corporate within 3 espionage

Truncation and Wildcards

Use wildcards to replace letters in a word. ? * **

Use a question mark ? to replace a single letter in the word.
Use an asterisk * to replace up to five letters at the asterisk's position.
Use a double asterisk ** to replace any number of letters.

Examples: wom?n retrieves woman or women
modernis* retrieves modernism, modernist, modernists
huck** finn retrieves huckleberry finn

Fields

Use field abbreviations to search for keyword occurrences in a specific part of the catalog record.
Fields available for CATNYP are a:[author], t:[title], s:[subject], and n:[notes and any other indexed fields]

Examples: a:williams and t:streetcar
                a:niet*che and t:zarathustra
                t:lincoln and s:fiction
                s:roosevelt and n:scribners

Search Limits: Pre-Search

You may limit your Word search by

language
format
publication type
publisher
place of publication
year of publication
collection scope (Entire Collection or Dance Collection)

Only items that match your search limit criteria will be retrieved.

Search Limits: Post-Search

After performing any search in which multiple items are retrieved, you may limit your search by clicking on Limit This Search. Options include

language
material type (format)
book or periodical (publication type)
words in Title, Author, or Subject fields
publisher
place of publication
year of publication
sort the results by year

This type of search limit performs more slowly than Word search limiting.

Saving Your Results

As you search CATNYP, you may wish to save records for items that you wish to remember. You may print them, save them to a disk, or email them to yourself.

There are 2 ways to save records:

If you are browsing a list of titles, you may click on the check-boxes next to items you want to keep. Be sure to then click on the "Save Marked Records" button at the bottom of the screen before moving to the next screen.
If you are viewing an individual record, you can click on the "Export" button at the top and bottom of the screen.

All items you save will be held until you exit CATNYP.

To see the items you have saved, click on the "Export Saved List" button at the top and bottom of the screen.

You may then choose to e-mail the records to yourself, print them out (choose the "screen" option), or save them to a disk. If you use ProCite or End-Note bibliographic software, you may also download them in those formats.