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| Help with the Library Catalogue |
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The Library database covers the post-1900 books, journal articles and conference proceedings held at the three sites of the Actuarial Profession in Edinburgh, Oxford and London.
It covers information on actuarial science together with insurance (life and non-life), reinsurance, pensions, employee benefits, social security, investment, corporate finance, health and care and other new areas into which actuaries are moving. The libraries also acquire statistical publications on demography, economic indicators and marketing. The majority of the materials are in English, although some materials in other languages are also included.
Catalogue records have been made for books and journal articles, and you can search by Author, Title, Date of book or article, and Journal title. If you are unsure of the exact information, you can search all fields at once with the simple search or the advanced free text search.
Many papers are available for immediate downloading and include the URL in the catalogue record.
Some books are available to buy from the Publications Shop. You can order these materials online via http://www.actuaries.org.uk/research-and-resources/eshop.
The initial search page offers a ‘simple search’, where all the terms you type in the box will be combined. All catalogue records that contain all the terms you searched for anywhere in the description will be returned.
You can also search on word stems by typing an asterisk at the end of a word. E.g. ‘model*’ will find model, models, modelling, modeless, etcetera.
By using the checkboxes you can limit your search to only display electronic documents, documents from the Actuarial Profession’s website, or journal articles.
The search will return quite a lot of results. If you are after a specific publication, please click on the link to the Advanced search, which will offer you more specific options to narrow down your search.
The advanced search offers several search options:
By using the checkboxes you can limit your search to only display electronic documents, documents from the Actuarial Profession’s website, or journal articles.
The advanced search reads your search terms as a phrase, unless you use connectors.
Please enter your search terms in one or more boxes. You can use the ’List options’ button to see and select terms available – see below for more information.
You can select from the options next to the boxes to combine the different types of search.
AND means that the results must contain all the terms you enter
OR means that the results must contain one or more of the terms you enter, but not necessarily all of them.
NOT means that you specifically don't want to search for a particular term.
Within the search boxes you can use the symbols &, / or ! between words or phrases to represent AND, OR, NOT. Include a space before and after the symbol.
The system will automatically search for the phrases if you enter multiple words, unless you combine the words with the connectors.
You can also search on word stems by typing an asterisk at the end of a word. E.g. ‘model*’ will find model, models, modelling, modeless, etcetera.
| Type this... | To find ... |
| life insurance | those words, in that order |
| life / insurance | either word (or both) |
| life & insurance | only documents that contain both words (documents that contain just one of the words will be ignored) |
| life insurance ! Germany | life insurance but not related to Germany |
When you have entered your search criteria, click ‘Search’. Records that meet your criteria will be displayed as a list for you to select from. Click on ‘Full details’ to see more information about an item.
To return to the search screen, use the ‘Back’ button, or the ‘New search’ button.
If you would like to get more search results, you can try the Simple search by following the link.
The free text search searches across all the fields in the catalogue record. Type your terms in the box, using connectors where necessary, and the system will return the catalogue records that contain the terms anywhere in the description.
If you want to search on a specific author, please type the surname. If you know the firstname(s) or initials, you can type these in like ‘Daykin Chris D’, but it is advisable to use the ‘List options’ button - see below for more information
You can search specifically for the title of the journal you are interested in via the ‘Journal title’ search.
Please be aware that the following journals of The Actuarial Profession are on the system under their abbreviated name:
If you are after journal articles only, you can limit your search by ticking the checkbox ‘search journal articles only’.
| You can specify | |
| A particular year e.g. 2008 | This only finds books and articles published in 2008 |
| A range of years by separating the two by a colon e.g. 2005:2007 | This finds books and articles published in any of the range of years indicated |
| A date should be greater than or equal to a specific year e.g. >=2007 | This finds books and articles published in or after 2007, right up to the present |
If a search screen includes a ’List options’ button, click it to select words from a list. This opens a dialog that shows words you can search for. For example, if you click the ’List options’ button next to a box labelled "Author", you can see a list of authors (personal and corporate). By pasting an item such as 'Smith, John' into the box you can search for anything that John Smith has written. This eliminates trial-and-error searching, can help produce more accurate results and makes sure you don’t miss out on any publications where the author e.g. did not use a middle name or initial.
The searches are not case sensitive, so you can enter your query in either upper or lower case.
A successful search will find one or more records. The records will be displayed as a list with brief bibliographical information for each found item.
You can select the number of results you want displayed per page on the search screen. The default setting is 20 records per page.
If you would like to display more records per page please select the amount from the dropdown menu.
Click on "Full details" for more information on the item, including an abstract where available, and which site(s) the item is held at. Click ‘Next record’ or ‘Previous record’ to browse through the full details of the search results one by one. Alternatively, go back to the listing and select the full details of another item.
Some records contain a link to the original document. Click on the URL to go directly to it. The link will open in a new window, so you won't lose the list of results.
If you want to restrict your search to electronic documents, please tick the check box ‘Search electronic documents only’ or ‘Search electronic documents on www.actuaries.org.uk only’.
To request an item from the library, add the item(s) to your shopping basket by ticking the check box(es) in front of it and clicking the ‘Add selected items to basket’ button. If there are several pages with results, please add the results per page.
Submit the form to the library using the ‘View basket’ button and ‘Request items’.
Please include a name, daytime phone/fax number and a valid e-mail address so we can get in touch with you.
Loans, up to 6 items, can only be made to members of the Actuarial Profession.
If you are not eligible to borrow books we will inform you; there may be an alternative way that you can consult the material.
Photocopies can be supplied to all users, subject to copyright regulations. A charge of 20p per A4 page is made for photocopies.
We will contact you with a quotation for the cost of copying before we send anything out to you.
Prepayment will be required from non-members, either by Visa/Mastercard/Switch or by sterling cheque (payable to Actuarial Resources).
Further information about the libraries can be found at http://www.actuaries.org.uk/research-and-resources/pages/library-services
For any further questions please contact libraries@actuaries.org.uk