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Introduction
The Union List of Serials includes the serials data from most of the institutions within the University of London, Imperial College London and the University of Westminster. The complete list of institutions with their libraries, contact and access details can be found in the ULS List of Libraries. The current total (November 2006) of libraries in the ULS is 20.
The service works best if JavaScript is turned on in your web browser.
The ULS service allows you to cross-search as many institutions as you like all at once (see Select Catalogues). The default is to search across all the institutions in the ULS.
Step 1. Selecting the search type
There are 5 possible types of search, to select the type you require, simply click on the relevant radio button. The different search types are described below:
| Known periodical title | This search type is the default. Use this option to find a specific,
known title. It looks for occurrences of the specified search term anywhere in the title; e.g. a search on 'brewing' will retrieve titles such as Brewing Review, Journal of the Institute of Brewing, Malting Brewing and Allied Processes. |
| Keyword anywhere | This has the broadest possible coverage
of the ULS databases. It looks for the search term anywhere in the title,
subject headings and issuing body details. In this type of search, multi-word searches are treated as phrases, e.g. 'irish history' will not retrieve the journal 'Irish Economic and Social History' but will retrieve 'Writings on Irish History'. |
| Subject | This searches for periodicals with the specified search term as their subject classification. Please note that many records do not have a subject classification so you may like to use the "Keyword anywhere" search as an alternative. |
| Identifier | A unique number identifying the periodical, such as ISSN. Note that this information is absent from a significant number of records. |
| Issuing body | The organisation or person responsible for the production of the title, e.g. Institute of British Geographers. |
Step 2. Entering your search term
Enter your search term in the box and then click on the "Search" button to perform your search.
The system is not case-sensitive, so you can use upper or lower case, or a mixture, in your search term, e.g. 'new scientist', 'NEW SCIENTIST' and 'New Scientist' are all accepted and will produce the same results.
Currently it is not possible to combine terms using Boolean functions (AND, OR etc.), although this facility may be introduced in the future. Also please note that wildcard characters (e.g. "*") for truncation are also not recognised.
Results
The results are displayed as a list of serial titles with their
holding libraries; a summary is displayed at the top of the page. Clicking
on the 
symbol next to each brief entry will
display full details of that result, including holdings and location data where available.
Click on the 
symbol to close the expanded display. If neither symbol is
displayed, this indicates that there is no further data available for that
particular result.
- Combining results - where possible, duplicate results have been combined for display by matching ISSN data. Ideally, you should see one bibliographic record per
title with all its ULS library locations listed but this is not always possible as
it depends greatly on data contained in the original record.
- Sorting - the results are listed alphabetically and items with the same title are displayed together
as far as possible.
- Holdings details - for a few titles, details of the range of
volumes and years held may not always be available; please contact the
relevant library directly for this information.
- Variations in data - the item records available to the ULS service
come directly from the member institution library systems, and there
is no editing of the data. Because cataloguing practice varies from library
to library, you are likely to notice differences in the amount and quality
of information retrieved from your ULS search. Due to the differing structure
of the records, your search term may not appear in the displayed record.
Further Help and Advice
For further help and advice, please consult staff at your local library.