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At university, your lecturers will not give you all the information you need to write your assignments, nor will searching Google be enough. You will need to find much of your own information, so please work through the InfoTrekk guide.
InfoTrekk introduces you to very basic library terms and concepts like catalogues, shelf numbers, journals, journal databases and referencing styles. It also shows you how to work out the search keywords for your topic.
This guide will help you with your information literacy assignment: finding online and print sources of information about a country.
Encyclopaedias give basic background information on a country's history, geography, population and culture, but you should always check how current the information is. Here are some useful titles:
Europa World Year Book.
Robertson Library, Level 2, Reference Collection, Shelf Number : R900 37936
This is a quality, up-to-date source of information with statistics on every country. [You can’t borrow Reference items but you can photocopy the information].
The World Factbook
This online title has background information on all countries and a range of statistics. It is freely available on the Internet and is kept up-to-date.
Legal Systems of the World (e-book)
This online e-book has a description of the legal system of every country. To find it, you will first have to search the Curtin Library Catalogue by the book's title, then link to it from the catalogue. Login to the book with your student ID number and OASIS password. The countries are listed in alphabetical order.
Doing Business: Benchmarking business regulations
http://message.worldbank.org
This World Bank database ranks countries against OECD measures of "business friendly" regulations. It is freely available on the Internet.
Encyclopedia of World Cultures
Robertson Library, Level 2, Reference Collection R306.03 ENC
Worldmark Encyclopedia of Cultures and Daily Life
Robertson Library, Level 2, Reference Collection R305.8003 WOR
Books give more detailed information about aspects of a country than reference material. To find books about a country, search the Curtin Library Catalogue with a Keyword search and type in your country. You can also add a term for an aspect of the country you are interested in. For example:
[country] economic conditions
[country] industrial relations
[country] culture
[country] information technology
[country] government
If you do not find a book about the country, try searching with words for the region - or the type of country e.g. Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, Europe, South America, developing countries etc and terms for the aspect. For example:
Africa commerce
Developing countries information technology
You may find that some books are e-books and you can read them online (after logging in, of course).
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Tips
If you find that books at Curtin Library are on loan, you may recall them. You can also search other WA university library catalogues and borrow books from UWA, ECU and Murdoch libraries. You must register with them as a Reciprocal Borrower by taking your ID card and proof that you are enrolled for the semester.
Journal articles provide very up-to-date, detailed information about a country’s changing environment. To find journal articles about a country, you must search journal databases that the Library subscribes to. The titles below are full-text databases where about 50% or more of the journal articles are online:
ABI Inform Global (a business database)
Business Source Premier
ProQuest (a large database which includes ABI Inform Global and a range of other subject databases).
You can also find these databases from the Library home page by clicking the Databases A-Z link or from the Subject Guide for Management. Login with your student ID and OASIS password.
To search a journal database, use similar keywords to your catalogue search but you must add ‘and’ between your terms and phrases. This searches for the terms in the title and abstract (summary) of the article. For example:
[country] and labo?r laws
[country] and tax*
[country] and economic conditions
(? is a wildcard and stands for 0 or 1 letter, searching for 'labour' and 'labor' at the same time.
* is a truncation symbol, standing for any number of letters at the end of a word e.g. tax* will search for tax, taxation, taxable, taxing).
Tips:
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News reports are the most up-to-date source of information on a country. If you search ABI Inform or ProQuest with your keywords, you can click the Newspapers tab to see just news articles.
There are many free newspapers on the Internet. Free newspapers usually just have one or two day's news articles. A good site for finding newspapers and media links from around the world is:
ABYZ News Links
http://www.abyznewslinks.com/
For more help finding newspaper articles, please ask library staff or Contact Us.
Using Google or Yahoo to find information about a country is not difficult, but it can be hard to find quality, authoritative information.
Here are a few tips on finding quality information and then evaluating it:
Curtin Business School expects students to use Curtin’s version of the Chicago Author-Date referencing style. Briefly:
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AND If you have any suggestions for this guide, please Contact Us.
Good luck with your assignment!
