E-resources for Society and Culture

[Mada438]

Hey guys, i recently visited the state library (well i do all the time) and was given a small tour of all the resources avaliable for research. As people are now starting their pips, and will be dojng the depth studies and exams this coming year, i thought it'd be best to write a small concise guide regarding all of the resources you can access (with an emphasis on society and culture) at the state library of NSW!
Seriously, if you haven't checked it out, you should really consider it. It's really worth it!!
To access alot of the stuff i will be talking about (and anything you discover at the state library) you will need to get a library card. BUT DON'T WORRY It's 100% Free! You can sign up for a library card HERE

Now that you've got a library card, lets continue!

Catalouge: Find books and other published materials in the State Librarys' catalogue. It also includes Ebooks. You will need to sigh up for a library card in order to download Ebooks for your use for 3 weeks. Some books are also avaliable via interlibrary loan (you can loan a book from the state library and pick it up from your local one
Catalogue seearch tips

• Use advanced search to combine more than one search word (seriously useful for narrowing down your search
• When searching for an author, put the surname first (e.g Smith,John)
• You must sign in to the catalogue to request material

Issues in Society:The state library holds copies of "issues in society" journal. Which documents, key issues surrounding societies all over the world for the last decade or so. They're a really good starting point if you're still stuck for an idea!

Pips:If you get a chance to visit the state library, they have a vast collection of award winning pips from many different years, which can be a good place to start if you have a topic, but need a springboard into conducting some additional secondary research. There are also some digested extracts of some truly standout pips on their website, which can be viewed here

e-Resources:These are free to access with your state library card. The are high quality, academic material to ensure your project is well researched

• Go to this site here
• If "HSC" is not selected, then select it. It will then have a drop down menu. Click on "society and culture" and a full list of e resource databases will appeear

If the "HSC" and "society and culture" dropboxes are already selected then ignore step 2 and browse away!
If you already know of a specific database that is useful, you can search for it specifically using the "by databse title" tab

e-Books:Find an ebook by searching by keyword, or browsing by category. A useful category for society and culture is obiviously "social sciences". Although there a number of other subjects you can browse, depending on your actual PIP topic.
Find "issues in society" by searching it in the search bar

Search tips for e-Resources:

• Use "quotation marks"for EXACT phrase searching (literally searches the databases for anything that mentions the specific phrases you enter in quotation marks
• Use ADVANCEDsearch to combine words using AND, OR, NOT
• Use asterixes * for wildcards (alternative endings of words) e.g sport*=sports, sportsman, sportswoman etc
• Select full textsearch options to find full text articles only. NB. In some databases, this will be called "content i can access"
• Watch your spelling-both for accuarcy and americam spelling variations
• Vary your search terms-try synonyms for your topic words
• You can refine your results in some databases by limiting to scholary or peer reviewedsources for academic level journals which have been evaluated by experts

Society and culture specific databases
Choose subject "social sciences" from the drop down menu for the full list.
But these are some that i recommend starting with
INFORMIT
Focuses on: Australasian scholary research and provides access to full text articles and references
Includes:

• Australian Public affairs full text
• Informit families and society collection
• Informit Humanities and social sciences collection
• Multicultural Australia and immigration studies

PROQUEST
Provides: Online full-text access to a wide range of international journal articles and newspapers
Includes:

• Proquest research library
• Proquest Social science
• Proquest Psychology
• Proquest Religion
• Proquest Australia and New Zealand newstream
• Periodicals Archive Online (PAO)

EBSCO
Provides: Access to many databases holding full-text articles and references from a wide range of Australian and International journals
Includes:

• Australia/New Zealand points of view reference center
• Academic Search complete

So that is a guide regarding accessible resources at the State Library (Both in person and online) that can be used for research for your PIP.
To whomever is reading this, good luck with writing your PIP!