University of Chicago Library: Lens Help

Return to Lens

Lens Help

Searching

Search Basics

To get started, enter one or more search words into the text box. Then press the Enter key or click the Search button.

Searches are not case-sensitive: Munuc, MUNUC, and muNuC all return the same results.

Expansion and Word Variants

Although Lens will give preference to your search term as typed, it will also expand your search with common synonyms, alternate spellings, plurals, and stemming. Searching for chem will also garner results from chemistry, chemical, and chemesthetic. Occasionally the expansion set is quite broad (see education).

Hate word expansion? Use quotations. "chisago" will ensure that your search is limited to Chisago County, Minnesota, and not expanded to include our hometown.

Multiple Words

Lens will attempt to find all words you enter. The order of the words does not matter: university chicago and chicago university will return the same results.

Lens does not recognize phrase searching. "University of Chicago" is equivalent to "University" "Chicago" "of".

If you would like Lens to include results with only one term, use OR (in capitals). For example, google OR microsoft.

Excluding Words

Any term can be excluded with the "minus" sign: chicago football -bears to find information about football teams in Chicago beyond the Bears.

Complex Queries (Concatenated Searching)

You can combine and "nest" searches using parentheses. potter -(harry OR wizard) will easily find information other Potters of note.

CJK Searching

Lens will display CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) characters, but does not index them. If you need to search for CJK terms, use the Library Catalog.

Advanced (Fielded) Search

The "Advanced Search" link allows you to precisely limit your search to a particular format (book, journal, DVD, etc.) or to a specific field such as "author" or "title." Note that the available fields will depend on the format you select. For example, only Sheet Music allows searching by Instruments.

You can also do "fielded searching" in the main search box: to do an author search for Melvil Dewey, type author:dewey, melvil. Other fielded search examples:

Give me Everything!

If you'd like the result list to include every item indexed by Lens, type special:all. Note this operation may be slow at peak times.

Search Results Window

Word Cloud

The Word Cloud--on the left of the page--offers words that Lens considers closely related to the search term you typed. The words include:

Lens does not "make up" terms: all words in the Word Cloud, including spelling variations, are taken from a book record or other piece of Library information indexed by Lens.

Terms considered more relevant are in larger type. However, distance and direction are irrelevant: Lens just arranges the terms so they fit in the space. (If you run the same search twice, you will find the same terms in both word clouds—but usually in different places.)

Navigating Using the Word Cloud

Clicking on a term in the Word Cloud will execute a new search based on that term. Note that Lens is not combining your first and second searches: clicking jefferson in the example Word Cloud (above) is not equivalent to searching for jefferson and madison. Instead, Lens runs a new search on jefferson—and "remembers" that you navigated to jefferson from madison when ranking the search results.

Navigating to a third term (e.g., hamilton) will generate another new search, with Lens ranking the results based on all three terms. Although you can build a lengthy "discovery trail" in this fashion, as a practical matter only the most recent 4-5 terms have a significant impact on the list of search results.

"Discover" and "Authors" Tabs, and Making the Word Cloud Go Away

When Lens thinks your search term might be a person's name, an Author tab will appear at the top of the Word Cloud. Clicking this tab will switch to an alphabetical list of authors, taken from the Library Catalog. Clicking on an author's name will execute a new search for that author's works.

If you dislike the Word Cloud and find it unhelpful, press the small left-angle bracket (the "less than" symbol) next to the Discover and Author tabs to hide the Word Cloud.

Reference Links

When appropriate, Lens will link to relevant pages in the Dictionary of National Biography and other online reference resources. These include:

Note that these resources are restricted to the University community—if you are off-campus, you will be presented with a login page before seeing the information.

Refinements / Facets

Refinements (also known as facets)--at the top and right of the page--allow you to easily focus your search to a particular topic, format, time period, and more. The full list of refinement options contains:

Note that Lens only displays refinements if they help narrow the search results. If all your results are in English, Lens won't display the Language refinement; if they all shelve in the same library, there will be no Location refinement, and so on.

Stacking, Removing, and Keeping Refinements

Suppose you search for "madison", then refine by Format (book), Language (English), Location (Regenstein), Availability (Available), and New Books (Last Month). As each refinement is chosen, Lens adds it to a "breadcrumb bar" above the results:

Lens breadcrumb bar

Removing refinements: What if you want to see all items held by the Library, not just those currently on the shelf? Put the mouse over the Available refinement, and select Remove. Lens will drop this refinement and expand the result set accordingly.

Keeping refinements: Selecting Keep from the Remove/Keep menu will lock the refinement so it will be preserved in future searches. In the above example, the Book refinement has been kept.

To clear all refinements, click the "home" icon on the left edge of the bar. This includes any Kept refinements.

Viewing Search Results

The Results List (Brief View)

Lens sorts search results in order of relevance. (You can also re-sort the list by year, title, or author: see the drop-down box above the Refinements and Reference Links.) At or near the top will be records containing your search term(s) as typed. Records where the precise search term appears multiple times, or in significant areas like a book title, are ranked the highest of all.

The "Found" section describes and counts the relevant terms Lens noticed in the record, giving an indication of why Lens ranked the item high (or low).

Lens displays results in groups of 25. To see more records, scroll down to the bottom of the screen, and click Next to bring up the next 25 results. You can also skip ahead a few groups by clicking a number (2, 3, 4,...) or go directly to the Last page of results.

In the Brief View, Lens displays format, title, author, imprint, location/call number, cover art (if available), and certain forms of online access.

Individual Records (Detail View)

A typical book in Lens:

Descriptive Information

Near the top of the record are the book's title and principal author, followed by other descriptive information:

Clicking on Topics and Other authors will execute a new search. (Note that this is a new keyword search, and thus not the same as doing an Author or Subject search in the regular catalog.)

Availability

After the descriptive information, Lens displays the item's availability:

Enriched Content

Some items have table of contents, summary, reviews, and other "enriched content." If available, the content begins below the item's availability status. Cover art, if available, will be at the top of the right column.

Export

You can export Lens records to RefWorks. After clicking on "RefWorks," the RefWorks login screen should appear. Log in to your RefWorks account -- your record should import automatically.

Donor Information

Many Library acquisitions are made possible through the generous finanical support of Library donors. In these cases, the record will include the donor's information and an image of the commemorative bookplate placed in the book.

If you would like to make a gift to the Library, please see Giving a Gift.

Report a Problem

If you notice typos or other errors in the item's record, please notify Cataloging and Metadata Services by clicking the "Report a problem" link.

For Lens problems that span multiple records (e.g., Lens is sorting incorrectly), please use the Feedback link at the bottom of each Lens page.

For problems that do not involve Lens, please use the Library's Suggestions and Comments form. (Keep in mind that our power to fix problems diminishes rapidly outside the Library walls.)

Google Books

Many Library books are fully or partially accessible via Google Book Search. If Lens knows about a Google Books copy of the item, it will display a link. Note that the Library has no control over what content (if any) Google makes available.

Online Access: E-Books and E-Journals

3 views of online access to a book

Individual item records occasionally contain links to Google or other online copies. However, many online copies have their own records.

For example, the main record for Agricultural Medicine (second result in picture at right) only contains a Google link (to a "limited preview"). However, the full text of the book is available...in a separate record (first and third results).

To quickly find most e-books and e-journals, refine your search using the Format:Electronic resource facet. However, this refinement will miss full-text links in individual book records—so be sure to check for links in individual records and for separate "electronic resource" and "e-journal" records.

My Discoveries

With My Discoveries, you can make lists of titles and/or assign a rating, tags, or write a review of any title in the database.

You can start by searching for any title you want to add information about or want to add to a list. You then need to log in. To do so, either click My Discoveries or the 'Save or tag' prompt that appears for each title in the Search Results.

If you are a first time user, you will need to choose a user name and password and fill in your email address (to be used if you lose your password).

Making lists: click on the ‘Save or tag’ link for a title. By default, you are the only one who can see your lists. But you can make any list public so that it becomes an item that is indexed and retrieved like any other title in Lens. A public list is ideal for anyone who wants to create, e.g., a resource or reading list for others to use. To make a list public, click on your login name (which replaces the My Discoveries label at the top of the page once you login), display your list, check "This list is public" and then click Save. Because indexing occurs on a schedule, your public list will not be searchable in the database right away. But you can always see your public or private lists right away in My Discoveries.

Tagging: click on the ‘Save or tag’ link for a title. You can enter more than one tag for each title, using spaces to separate them. To make multi-word tags, use quotes: "United States". Tags assigned by users appear under the new facet "User Tags". Because indexing occurs on a schedule, new tags that you assign may not appear right away under the facet but you can see them immediately for each title you've tagged.

Adding reviews: click on the ‘Save or tag’ link for a title. The ‘Write a review’ link will appear. Click on it for a box in which to type your review.

Adding a rating: click on the ‘Save or tag’ link for a title. Ratings run from 1-star (I hate it) to 5-star (I love it). Ratings are for your use only; they do not display to other users.

Printing Search Results

To print an item record or page of search results:

More Information

For more information about Lens, see the FAQ or leave us feedback.




Powered by AquaBrowser Library