How to Search AustLit

Coordinated by AustLit Content Management

  • Search & Clear

  • The Search and Clear buttons activate your search and clear out the search components respectively.

    The interactive search components (People and Organisations, Work, Keyword, Subject and Scope) may still have previous search terms in them even if the drop downs are closed. Use Clear before you start brand new searches to ensure a clean search.

  • Boolean Searching (AND, OR, NOT)

    Clicking the plus (+) button on search boxes adds another search box for immediate use in an AND search combination.

    The downward arrow that appears when you add another search box lets you toggle between 'AND' and 'OR'.

    Now you can see two kinds of minus (-) buttons.

    Both boxes feature the (-) button on the left. Clicking this turns the box red to indicate the word contained will be excluded from the search (a NOT search).

    The (-) on the right will remove the search box.

    See more about these options.

  • How to read AustLit records: A brief introduction

    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:

    • Primary 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: female, male, non-binary, unknown.
    • 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 (e.g. 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:

    • Primary 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: female, male, non-binary, unknown.
    • 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.
    • Creator: records a range of creator roles (e.g. 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, e.g. 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.
    • Teaching resources where available.

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