Experimental Bookstore WAIS Search

This page links you to an experimental Gopher-based WAIS search of our bookstore's database of books and CD's. This search has been developed through the unremitting and generous efforts of David Walker and Mary Tan from UCI CWIS. There are several important tips and caveats to keep in mind as you proceed:

1. The database is not complete, nor is it entirely up to date. It consists of those materials that have been in stock during the past year, and it is updated on a roughly weekly basis. It is probable that material listed here is presently in stock and can be immediately shipped to you if you choose to order it.

2. Use UPPERCASE for all search terms. The data to be searched comes from a McDonnell Douglas Series 18 which is not dead, but sleepeth.

3. You can either search the entire database, or use the menu selections labeled "A Closer Look At..." to home in on a more precise subsection of the bookstore's wares. These subsections are divided by subject and/or location; they should help you to form a more precise search. (For example, if you searched the entire database for "EINSTEIN," you would come up with selections from biography, physics, T-shirts, and fiction; if you want only biographies, you can search the biography section specifically.)

4. Searches are conducted through a WAIS search engine mounted on the university's Gopher server. Enter a keyword in the search box, and the engine will retrieve any book or CD in the database containing that keyword. Hence, there's no such thing as a field-sensitive search based solely on author or title. If you enter "Wharton," you're going to get books by Edith Wharton and books put out by the collective Wharton School of Economics. If you enter "Foucault," you're going to get books by Michel Foucault and books with his name in the title. You're going to have to look at the results yourself to pick out what's appropriate.

5. Certain qualifications of the search are possible. Entering two terms will give you back a search result equivalent to the sum of individual searches on each term. In other words, a search for "literary history" will give you all books containing "literary" and all books containing "history", as well as all those containing both. It's roughly equivalent to searching for "literary OR history." In order to get only those books containing "literary history", enter "literary AND history". AND is also a useful operator for dealing with two-part names, because a search for "De Man" would produce the equivalent of a search for De OR Man; use De AND Man instead.

6. If you get negative search results, i.e.

   

   do not click on the Catalog unless you want to retrieve a few megabytes worth of database. Return to the search input screen by following the link back in your browser, and try your search again.

7. When you get your results, click on individual lines for fuller descriptions, with authors, titles, ISBN numbers and prices.

   Feel free to cut, copy and paste this information to your order form; any book or CD listed here can be ordered from us by phone, fax, email or U.S. mail.

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