About IndexCat

What is IndexCat?

Content

IndexCat contains over 4.5 million online references to over 3.7 million bibliographic items.* 2.5 million items are primarily journal articles; 250,000 items are monographs (books, pamphlets, and reports); approximately 300,000 items are dissertations (theses); and 16,000 are journal titles. Series 1 and Series 2 include portraits as separate citations but Series 3, 4, and 5 indicate portraits in descriptive notes for monographs and dissertations.

Coverage

IndexCat covers material from Antiquity through 1950 imprints. As in the printed series, Series 4 of IndexCat is incomplete. It includes citations printed only in the first half of the alphabet from A-Mn. The last half was never published. Therefore, if the first word of a name, title, or subject heading with its related journal articles file after Mn, they are not available. Series 5 excludes journal articles; the primary coverage is monographs, dissertations, and pamphlets with 1950 imprints or earlier. NLM will not add new bibliographic citations to IndexCat since its purpose is to reflect the bibliographic coverage of the printed Index-Catalogue.

Searching

Browse displays in IndexCat reflect the original printed dictionary arrangement that interfiles subject headings with author names and titles. Although IndexCat displays in this alphabetic order, searching is not limited to the pre-arranged dictionary display.

As a digitized resource, IndexCat provides the following features:

• Keyword searching for terms anywhere in the bibliographic description (Keyword Anywhere);
• Advanced searching to limit keywords to specific bibliographic areas such as Author names, Titles, Subject or Date (Advanced Search);
• Combination searching using Boolean AND, OR, or NOT. (Advanced Search);
• Phrase searching as well as term emphasis or exclusion (Quick and Advanced Search)
• Linked searching using headings from a single citation to retrieve all citations sharing the same data. Books link by author headings and journal articles link by subject headings. See: IndexCat Help. Select ‘View Relationships’ from the Table of Contents page: http://indexcat.nlm.nih.gov/help/icatcontents.htm

Although the printed Index-Catalogue does not provide direct access to authors of journal articles, IndexCat supports searches for all author names in any citation. Therefore, authors of journal articles are searchable.

Users may limit IndexCat searches to specific series, volumes within a series, or a combination of both. A simultaneous search across all five series is the broadest search and is the default search setting.

Software

The software platform for IndexCat is ENCompass, a product of Endeavor Information Systems, Inc. (EISI). As installed by NLM, ENCompass permits simultaneous searching with other NLM ENCompass databases or other linked resources. A pre-established link to NLM LocatorPlus – the NLM online catalog of books, journals, audiovisuals and other materials in the Library collections – is part of the basic ENCompass software.