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. 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.

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.

• Full text or electronically accessible records display the symbol
• Separately published works (eg. book, periodical, newspaper, and website records) display the symbol
• Peer reviewed journals display the symbol

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 Show 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.
• HTML: Hypertext Markup Language. Reproduces the full AustLit records as they appear on the screen. Includes coding and may display badly in some email systems.
• Tagged Text : text with list of information fields tagged. Used for exporting data to a personal citation database or reference manager
• XML : Extensible Markup Language, a meta-language for describing markup languages.

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. Export results by selecting the Tagged Text format to display 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. AustLit filters exist for EndNote and RefWare

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.