Databases

Find some helpful library databases and some search tips to use them.

Social work toolkit
Developed in consultation with lecturers and social work professionals in the UK, and brings together a range of learning materials, including print, audio & video.
Sociological Abstracts (Proquest)
Sociology, anthropology, social work, economics, education, medicine, community development, philosophy, demography, political science, and social psychology.
Social Work databases
Find a list of all databases with relevant material for this subject.

ATSI Health (Informit)
Australian Indigenous health. Warning: There is the possibility that some records contained in this database may contain references to deceased people, sacred or secret material, inappropriate terminology or offensive language, which, though unintentional, may cause distress to some people.
CINAHL
Covers nursing, biomedicine, health sciences librarianship, alternative/complementary medicine, consumer health and 17 allied health disciplines.
Informit Health
Provides full text access to Australian, New Zealand and Asia Pacific health journals, reports and case studies of practical support to anyone studying or working in therapeutic, diagnostic, preventative and primary health roles.
PsycINFO
Psychology and related disciplines, including medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, pharmacology, physiology and linguistics.
RURAL Health (Informit)
Rural and remote area health issues and care.

AgeLine (Ebsco)
Focuses exclusively on the population aged 50+ and issues of aging. Includes aging-related content from the health sciences, psychology, sociology, social work, economics, and public policy.
APAFT (Informit)
Australian Public Affairs - Full Text (APA-FT), is an indexing and full text database that provides Internet access to the scanned images of journal articles from published material on the social sciences and humanities.
FAMILY (Informit)
FAMILY indexes and abstracts current Australian writing and research on the legal, sociological, psychological, economic and demographic situation of Australian families, children and adults. Compiled by the Australian Institute of Family Studies, the database covers research, policy and practice issues on subjects affecting Australian families.
LGBTQ+ Source
Provides abstracts for over 400 magazines, journals, books and news sources relating to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender issues.
MAIS (Informit)
Australian immigration and multicultural issues.
ProQuest Central
Multidisciplinary database with over 11,000 titles, with over 8,000 titles in full-text. Over 160 subjects areas are covered extensively in this product including business and economics, health and medical, news and world affairs, technology, social sciences and more.

Search tips

Be aware of differences in American English and Australian English spelling
If a word is sometimes hyphenated, search using the hyphen and find both terms
Truncation finds all words with different endings eg. use addict* to find addict/s, addicted, addiction/s
Wildcard symbols finds words spelt in different ways eg. organi?ation will find organisation and organization (Wildcard symbol can vary between databases)
Double quotation marks keep words together as a phrase eg. "mental health"
Limits will refine your search results: language, human, gender, age, date or type of publication
Check the database Help or Tips to find advice on which symbol to use for truncation or wildcard, and other helpful tips

Health Databases Library Guide
Check out the health databases guide for more information on effective searching

Set up Google Scholar preferences to find items held by La Trobe University Library when you are searching off campus.