AustLit Fields

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The Australian Literature Resource

AUSTLIT FIELDS

Austlit records contain information in a wide range of fields, all of which are searchable. Go to AustLit's Help Pages or Search Tips and Techniques page for further information on searching, Boolean Operators and Subject search strategies.
Below is an alphabetical listing of AustLit fields. Search one or more fields to retrieve details of authors and literary works:

Abstract: records a brief summary of a work's contents or arguments

Arrived in Australia: Records the year of arrival in Australia for an immigrant or visitor.

Available: Advanced search

Author : records the name of the creator of a work, either a person or an organisation

Searching: may be searched using the 'Exact' option or Keywords.
For keyword searching enter author's surname and/or given names or initials in any order eg. Thomas Keneally; or Keneally, Thomas; or Keneally T; or Keneally Tom. Enter organisational names in the form of a statement eg. Australian Society of Authors. The 'Exact' option may be chosen by checking the Exact box.

Available: All Searches

Awards: records information about literary awards won by authors for particular works, or for general literary achievement

Major Australian literary awards are covered comprehensively including details of award name, year and placings. Coverage of minor and regional awards may not be comprehensive. Use the AustLit Thesaurus, to find the best terms for your awards search, to view awards contexts, and to choose narrower terms.

Biography: biographical information about an author or corporate history of an organisation

Searching: biographies are available on many authors and organisations. Either select the name of an author or organisation to find their biography (whenever names appear they will always link directly to any available biography) or use the Note Field Contains field to search across all the author and organisation biographies.

Available: Advanced Search

Creator Role: records the specific role that is played in the creation of a work

Searching: use to find works by specific roles such as: Translator, Illustrator, Editor etc.

Available: Advanced Search

Cultural Heritage: recorded when an author has publicly claimed that his/her cultural heritage is significant in terms of identity and/or writing

AustLit records specific kinship affiliations for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers if a writer publicly claims Indigenous heritage. The terms used conform as far as possible to those used in by Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. Spellings are fluid, and may change over time.

Searching: select a cultural heritage from the drop-down list.

Available: Guided and Advanced Search

Departed from Australia: Records the year of departure from Australia for an expatriate writer or returning immigrant or visitor.

Available: Advanced search

First Line: records the first line of an individually indexed poem (some selections and collections are not fully indexed in this way)

Searching: may be searched using the 'Exact' option or Keywords. Stopwords (An, The, A) are ignored. The 'Exact' option may be chosen by checking the Exact box.

Available: Advanced Search

Form: identifies a work's literary form eg. novel, picture book, criticism, poetry.

See the Form Terms page for full definitions of Forms.

Searching: use alone or in combination with Work Types and Genres. Select form(s) from the drop-down list.

Available: Guided and Advanced Searches

Full Text records AustLit works available as full text documents

Searching: use to limit your search to those works available in Full Text by using the Limit to full text option.

Available: Guided and Advanced Searches

Gender: assigned by AustLit only where an authoritative information source exists - some writers appear as 'unknown gender'

Searching: select from all genders, male, female and unknown in the drop-down list.

Available: Guided and Advanced Search

Genre: identifies a work's literary genre eg. adventure, crime, children's.

See the Genre Terms page for full definitions of Genres.

AustLit works can have more than one genre term assigned (eg. Children's and Humour).

Searching: use alone or in combination with Work Types and Forms. Select genres from the drop-down list.

Available: Guided and Advanced Searches

Has Been Serialised: records works serialised in newspapers and periodicals

Available: Advanced Search

Has Been Translated: records works translated from one language to another.

Available: Advanced Search

Is Expatriate: records authors who were born or raised in Australia but no longer reside here, while still maintaining a link to Australia

Searching: use to find works by expatriate writers eg Germaine Greer.

Available: Advanced Search

Is Storyteller: records authors, usually Elders of Indigenous heritage, who are recognised by their communities as the holders of memories, stories and knowledge of family, culture, land and sea. Story tellers' reflections are recognised as accurate points of reference within Indigenous societies.

Available: Advanced Search

Is Visitor: records authors who have been significant short-term residents of Australia, and have identified sufficiently with the country and its people to have written from an 'Australian' viewpoint

Searching: use to find works by visiting writers eg. Kangaroo by D. H. Lawrence.

Available: Advanced Search

ISBN: International Standard Book Number, a unique number assigned before publication to each published work. In use for items published since 1970

Searching: enter the ISBN as ten digits with no hyphens or spaces eg. 0646123456.

Available: Advanced Search

ISSN: International Standard Serial Number, a unique number assigned before publication to each published periodical title. In use for items published since 1973

Searching: enter the ISSN as two groups of four digits separated by a hyphen eg. 1234-5678.

Available: Advanced Search

Language: records the language of a work not written in English or translated from English

Searching: select a language from the drop-down list.

Available: Guided and Advanced Search

Notes Fields: records additional information about authors and works

Place of Composition: records the place of composition of a work as indicated in the author's signature note

Example: Kenneth Slessor's 'Beach Burial' was composed at Al Alamein.

Available: Advanced Search

Place of Publication: records the place of publication eg. Hobart, Sydney, Washington, France

Available: Advanced Search

Play Extent: play extent information - the number of acts or parts eg. one-act, two-act - is recorded selectively by AustLit

Searching: use to find plays by number of acts or parts eg. one-act, two-act.

Available: Advanced Search

Publisher: records the publisher of a work eg Penguin, Spinifex Press, Magabala Books

Searching: forms of publishers' names often change over time; use main words to broaden your search results if necessary. Eg Penguin not Penguin Books Ltd or Currency not Currency Press.

Available: Advanced Search

Specialist Subsets

Searching: select either 'Entire Database' or a Specialist Subset from the drop down list.

Available: Guided and Advanced Search

Show Author Records: a search tool that forces the results set to display author records rather than work records

Searching: this option is only applicable when searching on a mixture of author and work related attributes/fields. By default, the system will display work records when any work related attributes are selected but selecting this option will display author records instead.

For example: a search for Novels by authors born in Launceston displays a list of twenty-five novels; selecting the Show Author Records displays a list of the eight authors of these novels.

Available: Guided and Advanced Search

Sort by: allows for pre-sorting of results

Available sorting options are Date, Title, Separately Published Work and Electronic Resource. The default is set to Date.

Source: records details of work (Title, Year of Publication and Work Type) in which another work is published - e.g. a poem published in a newspaper

Searching: use Titles, Year of Publication and Work Type and Work form or a combination of these to find, for example: reviews published in Periodical Issues in 2003. These are complex searches, using the Advanced Search Help is recommended.

Available: Advanced Search

Subject: records as subjects Authors, Works, Literary Awards, General subjects (eg. Postmodernism, Reconciliation, Anger), Spatial subjects and settings, (eg. Sydney, Uluru ) and Temporal subjects (eg. 1984, 19th century, 1920s)

More than two-thirds of all AustLit works have been subject indexed. Some older works and a significant amount of poetry has not yet been subject indexed. Subject terms for creative writing are assigned fairly 'literally' and generally do not cover allusive or metaphorical meanings. No subject terms are assigned if the subjects of indexed works are obscure and ambiguous.

Searching: finds subject terms as Keywords (eg. a search on 'cats' will retrieve both 'feral cats' and 'pet cats'). Enter single terms or use Wildcards/Truncation and Logical (Boolean) Operators to construct more sophisticated searches.

Use the AustLit Thesaurus, to find the best terms for your search needs, to view subject contexts, and to choose narrower terms - (the And narrower feature allows you to search further down the subject chain and increase the number of results).

See Search Tips and Techniques for further help.

Available: Guided and Advanced Search

Title: records the titles and alternative titles of a single work (poem, novel), a composite work (an anthology or periodical), a series or a sequence

Searching: may be searched using the 'Exact' option or Keywords. For keyword searching enter title words in any order. Stopwords (An, The, A) are ignored. The Exact option may be chosen by checking the Exact box. Alternative titles are automatically searched.

Available: All Searches

Work Type: Identifies the type of literary work e.g. Single Work, Selected Work, Author Series, Periodical, Website

See the AustLit Work Types page for full definitions of Work types.

AustLit works can have more than one work type classification assigned (eg Reference and Website).

Searching: use alone or in combination with Form and Genre.

Available: Guided and Advanced Searches

Year of Birth/Year of Death : records details of a person's person birth or death and the year of establishment of an organisation

Searching: use a single year eg. 1920, or a year range eg. 1920-1925.

Available: Advanced Search

Year of Publication: publication date of a work. Also records the estimated date of an unpublished manuscript

Searching: use to find works by date of publication.

Available: Guided and Advanced Searches