Australian Politics 

Journals are a good source of academic information & debate in your area of study.

• Journal Titles are listed in the catalogue, but NOT journal articles.
• Journal articles are indexed on Databases - see Databases Tab
  
• Databases are usually subject based eg APAFT (Public Affairs Information Service) is an index of articles on  government policy, Politics and current affairs
  
• Some databases such as Factiva link to the full article. Other databases such as APAFT have some full text and some articles where you need to locate the full article via our catalogue
  

To find journal articles on a topic for essays you will need to become familiar with some of the recommended databases. The following steps are a suggested method :-

1. Identify your search terms - think of 2 or 3 keywords to describe your topic

2. Select and search the databases

3. Get the full text of the article

Use your Essay topic to determine the main concepts. There are usually only 2-3 concepts.

• Think of keywords to describe your concepts. 
  

eg senate and role and parliament*

• Think of synonyms or alternate terms that also apply to the topic
  

eg senate or house of review

NOTE

• Use OR between synonyms.
• Use AND between different concepts
  

Now Select a database using the list from the tab above, OR go to the library home page articles via databases and select Politics from the drop down list of subjects -> Humanities and Social Sciences -> Politics

choose one that has Australian content eg

• APA-FT

Example search on APAFT

The Results

• Not all your results will be relevant you need to evaluate them. Out of 50 results 10 might be really relevant and useful
• Look beyond the first 10 results.  Databases are not like Google. Articles are sorted by date.
• Select from the list
• Save the articles available in PDF
• Look for the articles that are not available on the Database

For example to find this Article from the results list follow the following steps

1. Look up the title of the journal in our catalogue or click on the link check your library catalogue

The title of the Journal can be found in the SO (source) field

2. Look at the library records for the journal - we usually have one record for the print journal and one record for the e-journal

3. Select the online record

4. Choose a link that will give you access to the 2008 articles. We need Volume 54 Issue 4 2008 to find the article

Journal holdings - an open holding statement means we have access to ongoing issues eg 1998 -

Journal holdings - a closed holding statement means we only have access to journal volumes between the years 1998-2006

5. Select an 'open holdings' link - Expanded or APAFT or Blackwell

6. Navigate to the Year Volume and Issue that you need.

7. Look through the contents of the journal issue by title or page no. and find a link to the PDF copy of the article to save.