How To Use Athena

To search Athena, Faulkner State Community College’s online library catalog, for books and materials held by the FSCC Library, you may come to the Library or search via the FSCC web site.  Remember, you must have a valid FSCC student ID to check out books and students cannot check out audiovisual materials except for classroom presentation use.

HOW TO USE ATHENA – BASIC SEARCH

EXAMPLE:  Type your subject search term ENVIRONMENT and press enter.  A listing of books that have ENVIRONMENT somewhere in their catalog record will come up.

If you are looking for a book by a particular author or about a particular person, you will need to type that person’s name in the search area using the last name first.  Punctuation is not necessary when using the Athena online catalog.

EXAMPLE:  FRANKLIN BENJAMIN

ADVANCED SEARCH

If your search finds too many entries, you will need to narrow your search. You may do this by using the ADVANCED SEARCH option.  From the SEARCH screen, you can click on the ADVANCED SEARCH tab at the bottom of the screen and then add to your search to narrow it:

FRANKLIN BENJAMIN

And     BIOGRAPHY

If your assignment is to find literary criticisms on a particular work, you will need to search for the author of the work and add the term criticism using the advanced search option.

POE EDGAR ALLAN

And     CRITICISM

If your search for ENVIRONMENT finds too many entries, you may want to focus on an aspect of the environment:

ENVIRONMENT

And     CLIMATE

Once you have successfully completed your search for books and then need to find the books on the shelves, remember that you have to write down the entire call number and go to the shelves to find the book.  The FSCC Library uses Library of Congress call numbers which are alphanumeric and will look like this: E 302.6 .F8 I83 2003.  The shelves are labeled with the first part of the call number, so go to the correct shelf and then find the book. If you cannot locate a book on the shelf, please ask for assistance.

EVEN MORE SEARCH TIPS

SELECTSEARCH

SALEM WITCH TRIALS

3 entries are found

Click on the first entry:  The Salem witch trials : a day-by-day chronicle

When the Full Record comes up, use the mouse and highlight witch trials

Then click on SelectSearch along the right side of the screen which will have a green “traffic” light (Green = Go).  You then increase the number of entries to 11.

You could also highlight witchcraft or any other word on the Full Record and click on SelectSearch and find additional entries.

A to Z SORT

If you need to find the most recent book publications held by the Faulkner Library on a particular topic, type that topic in the search area.

CANCER

158 entries are found

Click on A to Z Sort on the right side of the screen (green traffic light) and a SORT SEARCH BY box opens.  Within the box, scroll down to the entries and click on DATE OF PUBLICATION and then click on SORT.  Your search will be listed by publication date.  You will need to click on NEXT on the right side until you get to the most recent publication dates.

Need more help?

If you need assistance in using the Faulkner State Library, you may contact the library at 251-580-2145.  Instructors are encouraged to bring their classes to the library (and to the Learning Resources Centers on the Fairhope and Gulf Shores Campuses) for subject-specific library orientations that focus on search strategies for their particular assignments.