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ATHENA  The Lawson State Libraries’ Catalog

Athena contains records for the materials held by the Lawson State Community College Libraries.  ATHENA is accessible from any PC in the library and from your LSCC Library’s homepage.  Students need their student identification cards to check out library materials.

Orient Yourself to Athena

At the top of the screen are two options the “start over” button and the “help” button.

The next level of screen navigation is found on the right hand side of the screen.   Options in the navigation bar change depending on the specific screen you are looking at. Two buttons common to all screens are:

<Start Over> button to back track to the previous menu or new search

<Help> button.  Click <Help> for detailed explanations of Athena searching and search results

The last level of the screen contains another navigation bar using the tabs at the bottom of the screen to switch to the menu you want.

You can access any Athena menu from the Welcome screen or from any other Athena menu.

To switch to a particular menu:  From the Welcome screen or any menu, click the tab that corresponds to the menu you want.  You can access the most recently used menu from any Athena screen. To access an Athena menu from any screen:  Click the “Menu” tab or button.

Start Your Search

First, click on the “Searching” tab at the bottom of the screen or the search button on the left hand side of the screen.  Next, choose the type of search you need.  At the bottom of the search screen is a row of search types:  Quick, Visual, Advanced. The ATHENA quick search is a simple keyword search and is automatically selected when you access ATHENA.  Select a different kind of search by clicking on it.

Quick search – do a quick search when you want to do a fast check of ATHENA and when you are unsure of the exact title, author, subject heading.

Visual search – do a visual search materials when you want a quick way to search subject heading and when you want to do a browse search to find people, places, science, etc.

Advanced search – do an advanced search when you want to combine search terms from one or more fields and when you want to do a barcode or call number search.

QUICK SEARCH

A.         You can do a quick search by using a single search term as:

B.           

C.          Type-in the word, phrase, author name, title or subject and click on the appropriate button on the right side of screen.

D.         All materials (Books, Paperbacks, Videos, and CDs) will then be listed showing (a) Title, (b) Author, (c) Call Number, and (d) Material Status (Whether material is in or checked out).

E.          Click the “Search Results” button at the bottom of the page to return to your search.

F.          Click the “Start Over” button at top of page to begin another search.

G.         Click the “Go Back or Start Over” button when finished

VISUAL SEARCH

A.        Visual search materials are listed by “Picture Icons”.

B.         Click on “Visual Search” icon at top of page to view a listing of all picture icons.

C.         Click on a “Picture Icon” and all material related to an Icon will be listed.

D.        Some Visual Icons are listed Below:

(1)   Animals

  (2)   Holidays

                  (3)   People

                  (4)   Sports

                  (5)   Stories

                  (6)   Places                   

ADVANCED SEARCH

A.        Advanced search is used when you want to:

(1)         Limit a search term to a particular type of material such as a particular “Series”.

(2)         Use more than one search term.

(3)         Browse Athena’s Indexes.

(4)         Search a particular format.

    B.        You can also search by the buttons on the left side of the screen:

                - Search, Barcode Number, Call Number.

ACCESSING PATRON INFORMATION

      Patrons can access individual information about themselves as follows:

• Outstanding fine balances.
• Items on loan.
• Overdue items.
• Estimated fines due for items currently overdue.

To access your patron information:

1. From the search screen, click “Access Patron Info” button.  You will see the access patron info dialog box.
2. Enter your: 

3. Click “Select”.  You will then see the Patron Information Screen with all the information as stated above.

Tip:  Overdue items with fines are marked with a $ icon.  To see the estimated fines for an overdue item, click this icon.

SEARCHING HINTS

1. Athena has a HELP feature, click the “?Help” button at the top of the screen for help.
2. Search for the first word, ignoring the beginning articles “a, an, or the.”
3. Search for a person by typing their last name first.
4. Abbreviations in the alphabetical lists are arranged as if spelled out, for example Mac for MC, Saint for St.

Materials located on the Birmingham and Bessemer campuses are organized into distinct groups of materials called collections. The collection that Athena is working with at any one time is called the active collection. The name of the active collection is always displayed at the top of the screen.

Athena searches only the active collection. To find relevant items in another collection, you must change to that collection before searching.

To change the active collection:

1.            From the Quick Search or Advanced Search screen, click the “Change Collection” button. Athena will display a list of collections.

2.            Click the collection “Birmingham” or “Bessemer” that you want to make active.

3.            Click “Select”.

 Sample Quick Searches

Enter:  space and history

Select:  Search

Results:  list of records that contain both the words space and history.

Enter:  Toni Morrison

Select:  Author

Results:  records with “Toni Morrison” listed as the author.

Enter:  light

Select:  Title

Results:  records where the title contains the word “light.”

Note:  the word light can appear anywhere in the title, it does not have to be the first word in the title.  Light in August and City of light are two of the titles that could be retrieved with this search.

Enter:  african american biography

Select:  Subject

Results:  records where the words “african” and “american” and “biography” appear in the official Library of Congress Subject Heading or Dewey Decimal System.

 Note:   Subject headings retrieved by this search include:  “African American women—Biography,” “African American authors—Biography,” “African American legislators—Biography,” etc.

Adapted from Sagebrush Corporation © 1993-2004