How to use our online catalogue

Guidance materials to assist with the use of our online catalogue and details of its contents.

Our online catalogue holds:

• Library pre-1910 author entries
• Biographies
• Polar and Central Asia subject entries
• New monographs
• Maps to 1940
• Directorate of Overseas Surveys material
• Manuscript Archives (collection level entries only)
• Picture Library items (contact staff for Antarctic expeditions/Everest images)
• Artefacts

Searching

• 'Word or phrase' searches all searchable fields.  You can change this to ‘author’, ‘title’, etc.
• Click ‘Switch to Power Search’ for detailed searches
• Use the ‘Format’ tab to limit search to specific material types, for example 'Archives'
• Search results display in a basic list
• Click the ‘Full details’ button to see an individual record
• Click the 'Catalog record' tab to see main record
• To display all fields in an individual record, click ‘Change display’ , then choose ‘All’
• ‘Browse’ (via ‘Switch to Power Search’) creates a headings list giving the number of located records per heading
• All fields in blue are searchable

Requesting

On registration, you will be provided with a request form. If you wish to order items in advance of your visit please download the Request form (MSWord), complete it and email the document to enquiries@rgs.org.

Even if you are requesting remotely, we will still need the following fields:

• Control number
• Class number
  • Items with a ‘xx’ number; check if it is a periodical article, a biography/Central Asia/Polar subject entry or published post-1910
  • Look up post-1910 authors and periodicals in our remaining card catalogues to find class number
  • For maps, state the country, the map type, then number, for example; 'Map type G, number U.S.A. G.45.'
• Author
• Title (include periodical title/volume/issue/pages here when requesting an article)
• Publication date/edition

Ensure that you complete all requested fields.