Copac Map search guide

Page contents:

What is Copac?
The Copac Web Interface
Searching Copac
Displaying results
Marking & Downloading records
Help and Advice

Copac gives free access to the merged catalogues of 24+ UK and Irish University Libraries plus the British Library & the National Library of Scotland.

What is Copac?

Copac is a library catalogue created from the merged catalogues of major UK and Irish libraries, including the British Library Map catalogue. In addition to books, reports etc. there are records representing a diverse range of print and manuscript maps, atlases and nautical charts, as well as plans and topographical drawings.

The Copac Web Interface

Go to http://copac.ac.uk/
Select the Search Copac button to start searching Copac

You will see the 'Quick search' form. The tabs above the form give you the 'Main search' or 'Map search'.

Searching Copac

To restrict your search to cartographic materials only,select the Map Search tab above the default Quick search form.
To search all Copac records use the Quick search or Main Search forms.

Note: Records that are not defined as 'cartographic' are excluded from a Map search. If your searches fail use the other search forms to search all records.

Entering search terms:

Enter your query terms into the Map search form,
Select a 'Search' button.

You do not need to enter text into every field.

Using the Map Search Fields

Place name search

Enter a place name such as a town, region, country, river. ? Eg. Euston; Snowdon; Norwich; Finland; Pacific ocean. Copac searches record titles, content notes and subjects.

Scale search

Scales may appear in many forms. As far as possible scales are converted to a standard form eg. 1:50000.

Fuzzy scale: Select a scale from the list to find records with a similar scale, most useful for older material.
Exact scale: Enter a scale, eg: 1:25000, to find records with exactly that scale.

Note: Not all cartographic records include a scale.

Keyword search

To include a title, publisher, subject etc. in your search use the 'Keyword' field. This looks for your search terms in all parts of the records and automatically checks for English plurals. Eg. combine a search for Cheshire in the 'Place' field with Railway in the 'Keyword' field.

Limiting a search

You can restrict your search results using the Limit fields:

Date published: eg. 1794, eg. 2004-, eg. 1940-1945.
A date range does a 'fuzzy' search.
Place published: rather variable, so use only if needed.
Library: choose one or more libraries from the list.