Library

Introducing OnLine Contents (OLC)

Online Contents OLC contains references to all articles that appear in almost 15,000 current periodicals in all fields of science.

At the moment the database can be subdivided into the following disciplines:

• general: ± 4% (including general science & culture in general, communication sciences, documentary information)
• humanities ± 11% (philosophy, humanities in general, theology, religion history, language & liguistics, history of art, art forms, theatre, music)
• sciences: ± 14% (including mathematics, natural sciences, chemistry, geology, astronomy)
• biomedical sciences: ± 30% (including biology, environmental sciences, medicine, veterinary sciences)
• applied sciences: ± 18% (including technical sciences, engineering agricultural sciences, home economics, architecture, mining, process technology)
• agricultural sciences: ± 2%
• social sciences: ± 9% (including sociology, cultural anthropology, geography, psychology, educational sciences)
• economics/management: ± 7% (including business, organization, management, consultancy, labour sciences)
• law/government: ± 5% (including law, government and political sciences)

Searching literature

When you click the Go button or another link to OLC Online Contents, you will find the following search screen.

• In the search field, you can compose a search operation by entering one or more search terms.
• Above the search field, there are three drop-down menus with which you can modify your search operation.
• Once you have entered your search operation, click on the search button.
• The search results are then displayed on the screen.

Search terms

To search bibliographical data, you must enter a search operation in the horizontal search field, next to the search button.

• A search operation consists of a search term or a combination of search terms. A search term is a sequence of characters without spaces.
  For example: The search engine regards bookplates as one search term, while book plates is regarded as two search terms.
  Exception: the author's complete name is regarded as one search term. For example: bakker, bas de.
• In a search term, you cannot use the characters & | ~ () / unless they are preceded by a backslash \. For example: ups \& downs.
  
• If you want to search for a specific phrase, you must use quotation marks, for example "remote sensing".
• The search engine is not case sensitive. Your can use either upper or lower case letters or you can mix capital and small letters. This has no influence on the results of your search operation.

Once you have entered a search operation, click on the search button. To interrupt a search operation, use your web browser's standard button.

Using multiple search terms, sorting search results, etc.

Above the search field you will see a number of drop-down menus in the search bar with which you can modify a search operation. The options in the menus allow you to further refine your search in the database.

Menu 1

In the first menu you can select one of three search methods:

• Search (or);
  The standard selection is the search method OR. A search operation with two or more search terms shows all titles that contain at least one of the search terms. For example: einstein OR gravity searches for all titles that contain either einstein or gravity or both.
• Search (and);
  In the menu you can also select the AND search method. A search operation of two or more search terms shows the titles that contain all the search terms entered. For example: einstein AND gravity searches for all titles that contain both einstein and gravity.
• Browse;
  With the selection Browse you can scan the index for the search terms you have entered.

After a search it is possible to enlarge, restrict, etc. the results.

Menu 2

In the second menu you can select a search key with which you can further modify a search operation.

Menu 3

With the third menu you can sort the results of your search operation. You can sort by:

• Relevance;
• Year of publication;

By default titles are sorted by relevance. This means they are displayed in sequence of importance. Titles that are most to the point are displayed first. What determines that one title is more relevant than another title? The search engine analyses the contents of the title using a combination of the following factors:

• Frequency: the number of times a search term appears in a title.
• Compactness: the relative length of the titles found.
• Reverse work frequency: terms that seldom appear in the entire database weigh more heavily.

You can also sort publications by year of publication (JVU). The most recent publications are then displayed first.