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Fact Sheet
IndexCat™

IndexCat™ is the user interface that provides access to the following collections:

  • the digitized version of the printed Index-Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon General's Office. The content and coverage is the same as the printed catalog. See: About Index-Catalogue. It reflects the same publishing patterns: series, volumes, references, and the original dictionary arrangement for browsing and display. As a digitized resource, however, search access is not limited to the dictionary arrangement. Users may search all descriptive information as direct search terms.
  • electronic Thorndike and Kibre (eTK for medieval Latin texts) - the expanded digital version of Lynn Thorndike and Pearl Kibre, A Catalogue of Incipits of Mediaeval Scientific Writings in Latin (TK) (Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1963), and the two supplements printed in Speculum, vols. 40, 43 (1965, 1968).
  • electronic Voigts and Kurtz (eVK2 for medieval English texts) - the updated and expanded version of Linda Ehrsam Voigts and Patricia Deery Kurtz, Scientific and Medical Writings in Old and Middle English: An Electronic Reference, which originally was a CD-ROM published by the University of Michigan Press, 2000. See eTK/eVK2 Project.

Content

  • The Index-Catalogue collection 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.
  • The eTK/eVK2 collections contain over 42,000 digital records of incipits (the beginning words of a medieval manuscript or early printed book). One can search incipit data by manuscript, library, author/translator, title, subject, date and other invaluable information.

Search Capabilities

Search IndexCat by keywords for subject, author, title, journal title, note content, and by year of publication. Any term in the citation is searchable.

Search with a single term or multiple terms: in any order; in a phrase; or with word importance. In truncated searches, mark unwanted terms from retrieval results. Search by designating any combination of collections or Index-Catalogue series. The Index-Catalogue collection default is a search across all volumes in the five series. The IndexCat search engine also permits you to search LocatorPlus® - the NLM online public catalog - either independently or at the same time with other collections in your IndexCat search. LocatorPlus contains NLM holdings and current information for books, pamphlets, dissertations, and journal titles. Use this information to request material from the NLM. See LocatorPlus Fact Sheet for more information on LocatorPlus.

Search results display by collection but users may elect to combine all results into a single list. By creating a list of selected citations, users may print, download, or e-mail them.

Search IndexCat to:

  • Find journal articles published from late 17th to early 20th centuries
  • Find books, dissertations, pamphlets, and reports from 15th to early 20th centuries
  • Find early concepts, descriptions, and therapies for diseases and medical conditions
  • Find 19th century material on related scientific areas such as anthropology, archeology, biology, botany, or chemistry
  • Find material on 19th century military medicine
  • Find history and statistics by 'localities' - by country, region, city, or town
  • Find all materials by subject, author, or title
  • Identify texts from a 12th century manuscript
  • Identify the location of  manuscript witnesses
  • Find material owned by NLM but not cataloged in LocatorPlus

Browsing the Index-Catalogue

IndexCat displays Index-Catalogue citations in their original printed publication order. For Series 1-4, the browse is in a dictionary arrangement (A-Z) with author names and book titles intermixed with the primary list of Index-Catalogue subject headings. Series 5 is a divided arrangement with subject headings in a list separate from the list of author names and book titles.

Because Index-Catalogue subject headings do not conform to MeSH®, the modern NLM Medical Subject Headings, the ability to browse the publication headings gives users knowledge of subject concepts, terms, and phrases used in medical literature in the late 19th and the early 20th centuries.

For detailed information on the structure of IndexCat browse, see: http://www.indexcat.nlm.nih.gov/logicrouter/help36ui/hier.htm

Learn more about IndexCat

For further assistance contact:

History of Medicine Division
National Library of Medicine
Bethesda, Maryland 20894
Phone: (301) 496-5405
FAX: (301) 402-0872
Internet: hmdref@nlm.nih.gov

For information on NLM services, contact:

National Library of Medicine
Customer Service
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Bethesda, MD 20894
Telephone: 1-888-FINDNLM (1-888-346-3656) or (301) 594-5983
E-mail: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/factsubj.html

A complete list of NLM Fact Sheets is available at:
(alphabetical list): http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/factsheets.html
(subject list): http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/factsubj.html

Or write to:

FACT SHEETS
Office of Communications and Public Liaison
National Library of Medicine
8600 Rockville Pike
Bethesda, Maryland 20894
Telephone: (301) 496-6308
FAX:(301) 496-4450
Email: publicinfo@nlm.nih.gov