MIT Libraries Reference Manual

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Barton

Searching for Journals

  • call numbers
    • Some libraries use a modified call number to organize their journals (Science, Humanities). The call numbers do not contain "cutter" numbers after the subject classification. Example: Q.S399
    • This is an easy way to determine whether the journal is classified as a book series or journal (see when is a journal not a "journal").
  • when a journal is not a "journal"
    • Some materials are thought of by the general public as journals, but are actually book series, so are cataloged for book stacks. An example is Annual Review of Biochemistry (or any Annual Review series). To find these, do a Title Begins with... search on the basic search screen of Barton. Do Not use the Journal search.
    • In general, with journal titles, if you do not find the title using the Journal search screen, use the Basic Search screen.
  • receipt history
    • Click on All Items in Barton (under availability) to see what issues have been received. You can also look at the print issue of the journal to see what date it was checked in. That can help you to determine when we may receive a new issue. For example, if a June issue of a journal has a check-in date stamp of July, you will know that we receive this title approximately 1 month after it is published.

Government Docs

  • Most, but not all, Government Documents received under the Federal Depository Library Program are in Barton.

Conferences

  • Use the Conferences search in Barton. Type in unique terms. For example, to find "Proceedings of the 11th IAARC/CIB/IEEE/IFR International Symposium on Automation and Robotics in Construction. 11th ISARC 1994. Brighton, UK." try "symposium automation robotics Brighton"
  • Many conferences may be part of a larger book series (example: MRS Symposium proceedings, Proceedings of the SPIE). These are cataloged by the title of the volume and can be difficult to find by volume number. If you cannot locate them using the conference search, try searching Barton using the Advanced Search. Search for Series name and Series number. For example, to find Proceedings of the SPIE volume 1152, you will search Series Word "spie" and Series Number "1152".

DDC (Dewey Decimal Collection) Fiche

  • Some items cataloged before 1963 are not in Barton. For these items, each library has a box of DDC Catalog fiche. This is a list of Dewey Decimal cataloged items in the MIT Libraries. It is a combined Author/Title/Subject catalog.
  • The DDC collection stored at the LSA is, for the most part, not in Barton. Since 1999, monographs from this collection have been pulled and the titles cataloged, via contracting with OCLC. Once OCLC creates a record, the information is downloaded to Barton, and the volumes sent over to the Off Campus Collection (OCC, formerly Harvard Depository). The serials and journals of the DDC collection are being cataloged in-house by the serials cataloging staff.
This page was last updated on 02/01/08