AustLit is a rich storehouse of information about Australian writers and writing. Get the most out of your search experience by browsing our Thesaurus, AustLit Fields and Search Tips and Techniques pages.

AustLit offers two search service levels:

• Free Search: Non-subscribers can search our free public author browse
and can use our Quick search for limited free service available.
• Subscriber Search: For subscribers only. Search the full range of AustLit fields and retrieve rich results sets.

Subscribers can choose from one of three search options to best suit their information needs.

Quick Search offers a straightforward way to search via a single search box. Quick search default uses keywords to search simultaneously across all AustLit fields. Simple author and title options are also available in the Quick Search box.

Quick search has features common to most keyword searching - the use of wildcards, phrase searching by enclosing terms in double quotation marks (inverted commas), use of the automatic 'and' between multiple terms. For more hints see Search Tips and Techniques pages.

Results are relevance ranked. The first 100 results are displayed and an analysis of all the results is presented in 'clusters' on the right-hand side of the screen below the export options. These clusters group results into categories such as work type, work form, subject, time period.

Searches may be refined by selecting results from these limiting 'clusters'. A search for 'rabbits' returns a huge number of results:

The search may be refined by selecting the Biography cluster from the Work Form group to find only biographies that feature the search term.

Further limiting is possible - for example by limiting to works included in the Black Words subset.

When accessing Quick Search from the research community pages, an additional checkbox option is available that limits results to that subset by default. When the subset checkbox is unchecked, Quick Search returns results from the full range of AustLit records.

Selecting the Federated checkbox under QUICK SEARCH enables the Federated Search beta, which is an experimental search feature being developed as part of the Aus-e-Lit project. If you would like to know more about Aus-e-Lit, please contact us

In addition to AustLit works, agents and full texts, the Federated Search returns results from the several online data sources. More data sources will be added as the project progresses.

AustLit offers three types of Federated Search:

• keyword: searches over a combination of fields, returning ranked lists of works and people or organisations
• author: searches for people or organisations by name
• title: searches for works by title

The AustLit results returned by the Federated Search are the same as those returned by QUICK SEARCH, and the general search tips apply. The additional results obtained from the federated data sources are shown in collapsible boxes in the sidebar at the left of the page. Where possible, Federated Search limits searches on the federated data sources to title or author to reflect the type of search selected, however not all of the data sources offer this facility, so in those cases the results shown for that data source will be the product of a general search.

Source selection

You can select data sources to include in the search using checkboxes beneath the search field in the Federated Search interface, which is also shown at the bottom of every Federated Search results page. These options are reset for each new search performed via the QUICK SEARCH box, and all sources except for LibraryThing and Flickr are included by default in the results.

Use the Guided Search option to search on the most commonly used fields. Guided Search searches across the entire AustLit database or across specialist research subsets of data and is useful for combination searches; eg. author + title or year of publication + subject.

Guided Search facilitates searches on a range of author and work fields.

Use the Advanced Search for complex queries or unusual field combinations. It supports searching on the full range of AustLit fields and allows you to select and deselect over 30 author and work search options.

How to use the Advanced Search

A complete description is available, but the basic steps to building your personalised search form are:

1. First Select the search categories relating to authors, works or subjects you wish to search on and click Select.
2. Enter your search terms or values in the relevant boxes and click Search

Advanced Search allows users to search across many fields, for example:

• If you wanted to search for a Female of Aboriginal heritage, Born 1900-1950 who has published Novels. Using the search options, you would select the relevant fields for your search as in the screen below.

The selected fields create the form:

Add or select the search terms or values:

Choose the sort and display options for the returned records or leave the default sort by date and full record display option. Combination author/work searches display the work records by default. You can, however, choose to display the author records by selecting the Show author records checkbox.

Your search form and the selector functions remain at the bottom of the results page. You can adapt it as required for new searches or alternative display options. Use the delete checkbox to remove options.

• AustLit Full Text records display the symbol. These texts are fully searchable
• Full text or electronically accessible internet publications and digital resources display the symbol
• Separately published works (eg. book, periodical, newspaper, and website records) display the symbol
• Separately published works of the form film/TV display the symbol
• Peer reviewed journals display the symbol

Direct links to searches using the following services are displayed beneath each work in the Federated Search results:

• Google Book Search
• Google Scholar Search

Use the Library Holdings option to automatically search Libraries Australia, the Australian National Bibliographic Database at the National Library of Australia to display Australian library holdings information.

If your results display in Summary format, and you want to see the full view, you can:

1. expand an individual record by clicking on its title;
2. return to your search form and redefine the Display Format option;
3. or scroll to the end of the results. Select records to display using the All or Marked buttons and select the Go option (located above the Email option on the right-hand side).

AustLit records may be saved, printed or emailed as

• Plain Text: text with no formatting, highlighting or hyperlinks. Stable and most suitable for email.
• Tagged Text: text with list of information fields tagged. Used for exporting data to a reference manager (see the next section)
• XML (Extensible Markup Language): explicitly represents the structure of the information, to make it suitable for processing with a computer program.

Print, save, email or export records in your preferred format:

Print individual AustLit pages by using the Print option on your browser Save AustLit records to the relevant area on your own computer by using the Save option on your browser Email results by selecting the format you wish to receive the records in. Plain Text is recommended for emailing as the other options will include coding. Enter your email address in the box provided and click the Email button. Exporting results. AustLit provides facilities for exporting results into reference managers. Reference managers allow you to sort, organise and retrieve information gained from your AustLit research to assist you in: Compiling bibliographies in a variety of publication styles Citing sources as you write Creating reading lists for courses

AustLit provides facilities for directly exporting results into the EndNote and RefWorks reference managers. It also provides generic facilities for exporting results into other reference managers (as described below).

Exporting to EndNote

• First, ensure you have installed the AustLit filter for EndNote. Click on the following link to download it, and save the file to your EndNote 'Filters' folder:
  • AustLit EndNote filter (filename: newaustlit01.enf) last updated: March 2008
• To export records into EndNote, choose the 'EndNote' option in the 'EXPORT / FORMAT ON SCREEN AS' drop down menu, and then click the 'GO' button. A dialogue box will open

  

• Click the OK button. EndNote should now open, and ask you to select your Reference Library. EndNote will then open a dialogue box ('Choose An Import Filter') asking you for the filter to use.

  

• Find the AustLit filter you downloaded, which will be listed as 'newaustlit01', then click the 'Choose' button.

Exporting to RefWorks

• To export records into RefWorks, choose the 'RefWorks' option in the 'EXPORT / FORMAT ON SCREEN AS' drop down menu, and then click the 'GO' button.
• A new page will appear containing the results to export to RefWorks

  

• Click on the 'Export to RefWorks' button. You may then be prompted to log into the RefWorks system.

Exporting to other reference managers

Results can be exported into other reference managers (such as BiblioExpress, Biblioscape and ProCite) by selecting the Tagged Text format to display or email records. Save these to your own computer as a text file. Import this file into the personal citation database or reference manager of your choice.

Timeline and maps

To generate an interactive timeline and map displaying work results, select the checkboxes next to the works that you wish to display and select 'Marked' or select 'All' to display all results, and then choose the 'Exhibit Timeline and Map' option from the 'EXPORT / FORMAT ON SCREEN AS' drop-down menu and click 'GO'. For a large set of results it may a minute or two to generate the interactive display.

Note: The interactive timeline and map currently works best using Firefox 2+ or Safari 3.1+. We are working on Internet Explorer support.

Federated Search Results

The Federated Search sidebar provides a summary of the top results from each federated data source. If additional search results are available, a link will be displayed next to the result count at the top of the result listing for that data source. The link will open a new browser tab (or window) showing all search results for that data source only.

Data Visualisation

You can view an interactive diagram showing relationships connecting AustLit agents (authors, publishers, etc) by clicking on the icon shown next to selected results in a Federated (keyword or author) Search. Visualisation of AustLit data is an ongoing activity within the Aus-e-Lit project, and more types of visualisations and data to support them will be added over time.

AustLit is the first major implementation of several important new data models, and its result displays are significantly different to those found in many other citation or full text databases.

Authors, publishers and other organisations are all classed as AustLit agents and in some cases have quite detailed records. These can contain:

• Common names: the name most commonly used by this author
• Also Known As (aka) names: other names used by this author, including non-writing names or common shortenings of names
• Also Writes As names: pseudonyms and alternative writing names
• Gender
• Heritage: cultural heritages publicly identified by authors
• Awards: for works, or for contributions to literary culture
• Biography: a brief summary of author's life and career
• Summary of works by and works about this author.

Works are classified by type, form and genre. As many works have more than one classification (eg. novel and crime, website and biography), the numbers indicated in the Works by and Works about lists may be greater than the total number of works listed.

AustLit Work records can contain:

• Creator: records a range of creator roles (eg. editor, illustrator etc.)
• Work title: records the first title under which a work is published
• Alternative titles: title/s under which the work has also been published
• Work subjects: including general concepts, places, people, time periods and organisations
• Work awards: Australian and international literary awards
• Relationships: to author or publisher series, sequences and other related works
• Publication history: details of multiple versions (where the content has been changed - eg. translations or revised editions - and reprints)
• Publication details: place, date and publisher plus URL for online items
• Contents: individual contents of journals, selected works, anthologies, multi-chapter works and websites.

See our fuller description of AustLit fields and AustLit terms if you would like to know more about AustLit data.

When using AustLit as an information resource for research you will not normally need to cite us, however, if you are quoting directly from any of the annotations, the biography or other notes, you should cite AustLit as: "AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource (www.austlit.edu.au), 2002- " and include the name of the author or work title.

For example - 'Author record, Patrick White, AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource (www.austlit.edu.au), 2002- [Retrieved dd/mm/yyyy]' or 'Work record, Voss, AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource (www.austlit.edu.au), 2002- [Retrieved dd/mm/yyyy].'

There may also be other rules you will need to abide by relating to citations of internet publications depending on the publication you are writing for.