Retrieval Tutorial

2 ways of searching in Aleph

Searching via the Find tab

Searches fields that have defined indices

• Good way to get a rough estimate of records meeting your criteria

• Cannot actually get all records however

Retrieval via the Services menu

Always check the help!

• For the most part, where Aleph expects to find input files and output files is pretty consistent, but if you are getting errors that a file cannot be found, open the Services form and check the help

View History is also very useful

• Whenever you run a job, make sure Add to History is checked; that way you can go back to look at what you did if results aren't what you expect

2 services

Services -> Retrieve Catalog Records (ret-01)

• Type criteria into the service form

Services -> Retrieve Records Using CCL (ret-03)

• Uses a system of indices and assigned tags similar to the entries in the Find tab

• Often runs faster, but is less flexible

2-step process

Ret-01 and Ret-03

• Return lists of record numbers

Services -> Retrieve Catalog Records -> Download Machine Readable Records (print-03)

• Take lists of record numbers from first step as input

• Outputs associated records in various formats

 * Binary MARC (.mrc files)
 
 * MARC XML (.xml files)

Example search and retrieval

• These can often take a long time, so we will not actually run the search

• Fill out form and then show resulting files

• Homework, assign: must provide MARC XML file