Need help?
Factiva is a business information database with a focus on current affairs, companies and industry news. It is available to Curtin staff and students and can be used to search for newspaper, journal and magazine citations, abstract and full text articles, as well as company reports.
This guide should take you about 30 minutes to complete. You may prefer to print it so that you can refer to a hard copy while you are working online. It is about 5 pages long.
This guide is divided into the following steps:
Step 1 – Getting Started
Step 2 – Searching the database
• Opening page of Factiva
• Finding a specific publication
• Browsing for publications to search
• Navigating the News Page
• Obtaining a company report
• Doing a keyword search
Step 3 – Marking some references
Step 4 – Saving your references to a floppy disk
Step 5 – Emailing your references
A simple way to access Factiva is to go to the Databases A-Z link on the Library homepage. You will need to enter your Curtin ID and Password.
You can also access Factiva via Gecko: Gateway to Library Databases (once you have logged in, select the Title tab and search for Factiva). If you are having trouble using Gecko, you may like to look at our Step-by-Step Guide.
Curtin has a 6-user licence for Factiva so if the opening page asks for a username and password, it means that all 6 licences are currently in use and you will need to try accessing Factiva later.
Opening Page of Factiva
This page defaults to the Search page which enables you search specific sources using keywords.
Finding a Specific Publication
Go to the Source section.
The source will default to Group: Australian Newspapers. Type the name of the publication you are looking for in the Find a Source box e.g. try searching for The West Australian.
Your results will appear in the box. For The West Australian, two entries are listed:
The first entry refers only to abstracts, so the second entry listed is the one we are after. You can check this by clicking on the i (info) button next to the title which details the coverage of the publication.
Clicking on the title once will add it to your current source list, double clicking on the title will exclude it from your source list. Click on the second entry of The West Australian once.
The title should now appear as a Currently Selected Source.
You can also limit your search by date by selecting the appropriate range from the Date drop down menu.
Browsing for Publications to Search
Navigating the News Page
Click on the News Pages tab at the top of the screen.
This page shows the current front page articles for a number of Australian newspapers as well as current stock exchange data. To read any of the articles listed, simply click on the title of the article which is a link to the rest of the record. The last two weeks worth of selected articles from the listed Australian newspapers can also be accessed from this page by clicking on the drop down menus located below the newspaper title. These menus allow you to specify a date (within the last two weeks only) as well as a particular section of the newspaper (i.e. editorials, sport) to be displayed. Using The Australian as an example, see how this feature operates:
Click on the first drop down menu located and change the date range to specify yesterday's date.
Click on the second drop down menu and change the focus of the articles to be displayed to Sport.
See how the articles displayed change to meet your request. Try this out on some of the other newspapers listed.
To change the country of origin of the newspapers listed, click on the drop down menu located at the top of the left hand menu bar. At the moment it should say Australia. Scroll down the list until you find the United States and click on this. Notice how the newspapers listed are now no longer Australian newspapers but United States publications.
Obtaining a Company Report
This feature of Factiva allows you to retrieve company news and financial information on a particular company.
Doing a Keyword Search
The database will search for references including both search terms and give you a screen of newspaper article references, a little like this:
3. Budget air fares signal threat to Victoria's towns in tourist season
The Age, 29 December 2007, 515 words, Ben Schneiders, (English)
IT IS the same fate that has befallen crumbling English seaside towns as holidaymakers look to sunny Spain instead. This summer, rural Victoria faces a challenges from budget air fares. (Document AGEE000020071228e3ct0003r)... More Like This
5. Big future in cutting computers' carbon footprint
Australian Financial Review (Abstracts), 13 November 2007, 277 words, Beverley Head, (English)
ORGANISATIONS with thousands of personal computers and big data centres are struggling to determine the carbon footprint from running their computers and colling their data centres. Analyst, Gartner, says that although only 0.75 percent of...(Document AFNR000020071112e3bd00061)... More Like This
This reference gives the title of the article, the source and citation details as well as the first couple of lines from the article. To view the full record, including the full text of the article, click on the article title; this is a link to the rest of the record.
Not all the results that displayed will be the kind of material that you require. While you are viewing your results, you might want to select individual records to save. You can do this by following these steps:
Factiva automatically saves your results as a web page when you click on the disk icon at the top of the screen. This can result in the loss of some information or may mean you are unable to read it correctly on your PC. To avoid this, it is suggested you follow these steps when saving your articles:
To start another search, click on the Search tab on the top left hand side. When you have finished searching, ensure you click on Logout at the top right hand side of the screen. Help is available within Factiva from the Support tab and by then selecting the link to Learning.
Deciding on search terms
To decide how to search you must decide what are the important keywords for your topic. You will develop your search terms from these words. For example, in this assignment:
Discuss the effect that introduced competition has had on the airline industry in Australia
useful journal articles, conference papers etc will almost certainly contain the terms
competition
airline industry
Combining search terms
Databases use Boolean logic which means you should use the word AND to search for references that contain all the search terms.
For example: competition AND airline industry
You also need to consider alternatives that might be used for your search terms. For example there might be good information about your topic in articles that use rival or opposition instead of competition. You can use OR in your search to pick up these articles.
For example: airline industry AND competition OR rival OR opposition
Truncation and wildcards
Truncation is used to pick up different word endings in references. This is useful because there might be good information about your topic in articles which contain the word industry or industries. If you truncate a word with an asterisk '*', for example, industr* it will pick up industry, industries etc. Rival* will pick up rival, rivals and rivalry. Compet* will find compete, competing, competitor, competition etc.
Wildcards are used to pick up different spellings of words. If you insert a ' ?' in a word your search can pick up variable spellings. For example, organi?ation will pick up both organization and organisation; wom?n will pick up woman and women.
So your search terms for this topic will be:
airline industry AND compet* OR rival* OR opposition
In Factiva, it will be necessary to put brackets around the 'OR' terms
airline industry AND (compet* OR rival* OR opposition)
For more on search strategies go to Infotrekk.
We hope you now feel confident about searching Factiva on your own topic. If you need more help with information searching on Factiva or other databases please Contact Us.
