What information can I get, and how is it organized?
You can get a variety of information from the InfoTrac database. Most students easily access Newspaper and Magazine articles the first time they search. Teachers are often more attracted by Academic Journal articles. Additional categories can include: Books, Primary References, Multimedia, and Web Resources.
Within these categories, InfoTrac classifies each article: Editorials, Viewpoint Essays, Broadcast Transcripts, Brief Articles, Book Reviews, and Encyclopedia Entries are only a few of these more specific labels.
To help you search effectively, InfoTrac offers several smaller database choices to its patrons; the most popular for our students have been The Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center, General OneFile, and Expanded Academic ASAP. If you prefer, you may search all these databases at once by selecting the box “search all cross-searchable databases.”
When you look at the standard results page for any given database, results are presented under a series of tabs that appear across the top of the page. Each tab shows you the category of the information it contains, as well as how many results there are. Within each section, there is also a menu that appears to the left that further breaks down the results obtained. You can click on a subcategory to view only the entries that are viewpoint essays, for example.
To view the layout of InfoTrac and get a “feel” for some of its features, consult the tutorial provided by OPI at http://www.opi.mt.gov/LibMedia/index.html. The pdf link is provided, along with a video tutorial, on the left hand side of the page under the heading “Training.”
