Need help?
Informit Online is a valuable source of Australian information. It is a collection of over 80 Australian databases covering a wide range of subjects. Some examples are Australian Public Affairs- Full Text (APA-FT), Attorney-General's Information Service (AGIS Plus text ) and Australian Education Index (AEI). In some cases, full text is not available on Informit databases but the Library may have the journal in print.
This guide
The guide should take you about 30 minutes to complete. You may prefer to print it so you can refer to a printed copy while you are working online; or you can open another session or page online.
The guide is divided into the following steps:
Step 1 - Getting Started
Step 2 - Searching the database
Step 3 - Viewing and marking results
Step 4 - Saving or emailing references
Step 5 - Finding the full text of references in the Library
A simple way to access Informit is to link directly from Quick Links on the left hand of the Library Homepage. You will need to enter your Curtin ID and Password.
You can also access Informit databases from the Databases A-Z link on the Library home page.
You are taken to the Databases by Subject view. Choose an area from the tabs for Business, Education, Health, Social Sciences etc. From the list of databases you can tick a preferred one to search---or Select all and click continue.
You will be taken to the Search Query screen with two search boxes connected by AND.
Before searching, it is useful to decide on search terms and plan your search strategy. See Help with Search Strategies at the end of this guide.
The search screen enables you to enter your keywords or search terms separately in the boxes provided and choose in which parts or fields of the record you want to search.
For example, to find journal articles for the following assignment.
Discuss the effects of violence in the media on children .
Click in the first search box and type in violence
In the next search box (Next to AND) type media OR television OR TV
Click on the link +Add more terms to add another search box.
In the next box (next to AND) type in child*
(AND instructs the database to find articles with all of these terms or alternatives).
The default that the software searches is any field. This searches for the terms 'violence' and 'media or television or TV' and 'child*' across the whole record (including the abstract).
If you click on the drop down menu and select Title instead of any field the software will search for these terms only in the Title of the journal articles. In the example above the Title field has been selected, to narrow the search (useful if you get too many hits that are less relevant).
Viewing
The search results are displayed on the left of the search box. Results found: gives you the number of articles found.
If you have a large number of records you can set further limits to your search by:-
The list of results is displayed as brief records. You can click on the tab Fields to Display/Brief & Abstract to get a fuller record for all hits or Complete Record for an individual article.
Note that the Source gives the journal title or book from which the article has been taken. This is important as you may need this information to search the Library catalogue.
Marking
As you view your results, you may want to save any relevant records. You can do this by following these steps:
Saving
Insert a floppy disk, USB etc into your computer.
If you have not already done so, click View Selected to display the marked records you wish to save.
Click on Citation: Save which is located on the right, above your list of results.
The next screen enables you to choose which records you want to save and in what format. Select from the drop down menus what fields to save and the Output format i.e. to save in html or plain text etc. You can also select to save your search history. (You can also choose Output format:EndNote Direct to export your citations to EndNote).
Once you have made your selections, click on the Save Records button.
A file download box will then appear. Click on Save and Save In: . Select the drive to which you want to save your records. For example, you might save the file to the A: drive if you have a floppy disk or the Removable disk drive if you have a USB.
The default filename is Informit_Results.htm so you may want to rename the file with something more meaningful eg media violence.txt
Click on the Save button.
Your records have been saved.
Emailing
You may want to email your results to yourself rather than saving to disk. To email results use the following steps:
Click on Email which is located at the top right of the results list.
On the next screen you need to choose which records to email and the format you want your records to appear in. This is similar to the save options. You also need to type your email address into the box provided and you may want to change the subject to something more meaningful.
Click on the Email Records button.
Now you have some journal references, the next step is to find the articles in the Library.
Remember, when searching the Library's catalogue you can only search for articles by the Journal Title, not the title of the article; so you must look for the Source or Title of your article.
Some Informit databases have 'Find It' links which you can click and follow through to the full text of the article or to Search the Curtin Library's catalogue to find if the Journal in which your article appears is held at the Library. If there is no Find it link, follow these steps.
From the Library home page click on the Catalogue link.
On the Basic search screen, select Title.
In the Search Box type in or copy and paste the Title of the journal. and click the Find button.
An alphabetical list of titles may appear - click on the underlined name of the journal.
For more detailed help on finding items in the Library Catalogue, see InfoTrekk Trek 4: Using the Library Catalogue 1
Deciding on search terms
To decide how to search you must decide what are the important or keywords for your topic. You will develop your search terms from these words. For example, in this assignment:
Discuss the effects of violence in the media on children
useful journal articles, conference papers etc will almost certainly contain the terms
violence media children
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: violence AND media AND children.
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 TV or television instead of media. You can use OR in your search to pick up these articles.
For example: violence AND media OR TV OR television AND children
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 child or child's. If you truncate the word child with an asterisk '*', it will pick up child, child's and children.
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:
violence
AND media OR TV OR television
AND child*
For more on search strategies go to InfoTrekk.
Alternatively, return to Step 2: Searching the database
We hope you now feel confident about searching the Informit databases on your own topics. If you need more help with information searching on Informit or other databases please contact the Library Enquiries Desk.
