MANDARIN M3 - WINDOWS OPAC
The patron's gateway to your library's collection

The M3 OPAC is the patron's gateway to your library's collection. Searching your collection for books, magazines, e-books, websites, maps, CD-ROM's, full text articles, and more is simple using the M3 OPAC.

Searching from the OPAC

What Can Patrons Search?

If your library system utilizes a Union Catalog, not only can patrons search your local catalog, but they can also search additional sites on the system. From the Databases tab, patrons can select and search any site as though they were in those libraries!

Standard Search 
Standard Search allows patrons to enter subject, title or author keywords when searching the collection or online resource. The number of results returned displays at the bottom of the screen. If patrons do not locate what they are looking for, or their search is too broad, they may then browse either the subject, title, or author indexes.

To assist patrons with narrowing search results, the Standard Search supports the AND, OR, and NOT Boolean operators as well as truncation searches (*), wildcard searches (?), and phrase searches (").

Enhanced Search 
The Enhanced Search supports the same useful functionality of the Standard Search as well as additional search field selections. In addition to searching by subject, title, or author, the Enhanced Search allows patrons to search MARC fields such as Date of Publication, Material Type, URL, Title Series, and Abstract/Summary from a drop-down menu. Librarians also have the ability to add or delete search fields, thereby customizing this search interface for your library's audience.

Visual Catalog: 
The Visual Catalog provides a graphical search alternative. By selecting pertinent graphical buttons, patrons narrow their search utilizing a topic tree approach until specific results are displayed.

Librarians may easily customize the Visual Catalog highlighting holidays, e-books, electronic databases, websites, activities, bestseller lists, Accelerated Reading Lists, New Resources, etc. Librarians can even select to launch applications such as WordPad, Excel, Encyclopedia, Atlases, etc. from the Visual Catalog screen. The OPAC enables you to select topics and appropriate graphic images. Mandarin provides over 60 graphics with the software. You may also choose to design your own graphics and add them to the Visual Catalog.

Search Results
The Search Results window is designed to display results in an organized and easily readable format. Each title is displayed with availability, material type, bibliographic information and call number information. The librarian can customize these display defaults as well as define the default font and font size of the Search Results list.

From the Search Results list patrons can:

  • view book cover images (if library has annual subscription to Syndetic Solutions from Mandarin)
  • tag/untag individual items or all items
  • print or save tagged items or all items
  • add tagged items or all items to the Bookbag, creating a virtual bibliography that patrons can print or save
  • sort the list by author, title, copyright date, call number and call number by prefix
  • save and print holdings data

and much more . . . 

If your library has the new Authority Control Optional Module, "See" and “See also" cross-references are displayed at the top of the results list. These cross references lead patrons to subjects related to their search.

"My Account" Feature
The OPAC now has an optional "My Account" tab. Patrons can select this tab, enter a user name and password and then view their personal account information. Information patrons can access about their account includes:

  • Current - Open or current transactions
  • History - Closed or historical transactions
  • My Info - Personal information that the library has on file

Additional Features

The Language option allows patrons to change the interface to display in any of the following languages:

  • English
  • French
  • German
  • Italian
  • Spanish

The Bulletin Board keeps your patrons informed of your library's hours of operation, holidays, or special events by linking to your home page, any Web page or document you want patrons to view.