• Holds and ILL Requests

  • Placing Holds
  • Placing ILL requests
  
  

• User Accounts

• Searching iBistro

  • keyword
  • author
  • title
  • subject
  • series
  
  

• Stopwords

Holds and ILL Requests

Placing Holds

Use the Details button from the Hit List to go to the exact item record. This makes it possible to use the back arrow to return to the exact spot searched before placing the Hold. When you are in the correct item record, click on the Place Hold button and fill in the required information.

Placing ILL Requests

If the item is not available at SSPL, search the Other Nova Scotia Public Libraries catalogue. Use the Details button from the Hit List to display the exact item record.

• NOTE: Clicking on the Place Hold button in the Hit List will send incomplete data to the ILL department, potentially making it impossible to fill the patron’s request successfully. Clicking on the Place Hold button from the exact item record will ensure that an ILL form pops up and the correct data will be sent to the ILL department.

Complete the ILL form that pops up, making sure to ask the patron about charges.

• If there is a charge, most libraries will charge $10 or more
• ILL always requests from non-charging locations first
  

If an item is not available in any of the catalogues, write it up on a paper Request from and submit it to the ILL department.

User Accounts

Patrons can check and modify their personal information after logging in to their accounts.

• A PIN can be reset either in iBistro or in WorkFlows, and will take effect immediately

• If a hold cannot be placed through iBistro because of an incorrect PIN, reset the PIN in WorkFlows (use override) to proceed. Inform the patron of the new PIN

• Address changes entered in iBistro will not take effect immediately. These changes generate an email to SSPL HQ. The updates have to be entered into WorkFlows manually by Technical Services Staff

Searching iBistro

No punctuation or capital letters are required.

The Search bar offers 5 options:

• keywords: Offers the widest results, with author, title, editorial information etc.
• author: Minimal information gets the best results, names can be in any order, e.g. maggie shayne gets the same results as shayne maggie
• title: Exact spelling gets the best results. Certain words in a title will skew the results, e.g. not, and, or:
  
• Of Things not seen will get 240 results.
• The Not So Big House will get 76650 results.
• Abbreviate the title by omitting the word not in both these cases.
• Alternative: search by author
  

• subject: Gives a broad range of results, e.g. India will yield authors writing about India, Indian authors, Indian food, travel and also Kate di Camillo’s “Because of Winn-Dixie” due to the character named India Opal Buloni
• series: A varied search. Sometimes yields the fewest results, eg. Heartland yields 10 desired results [out of 11] in a series search, 1 desired result [out of 5] in title search and 10 desired results [out of 20] in a keywords search
  

Stopwords

Omit Stopwords when searching in iBistro

iBistro ignores specified words when searching the catalog. These stopwords are usually articles, prepositions, or conjunctions, such as a, an, as, at, be, but, by, do, for, if, in, it, of, on, the, and to, among others

Use the Limit Search window at the bottom of the screen to refine search and to sort according to specific criteria. E.g. by date, alphabetically, LP only, or by combining criteria

When searching other Nova Scotia Public Libraries, data can be sorted similarly by using the Power Search window.