Using Infotrac to Find Better Sources

InfoTrac can be used very specifically as well; for instance, you can use InfoTrac to find articles from a specific magazine or journal if you know which issue you need. One way to perform this search is to use the Advanced search functions and select to search only the periodical in question (such as National Geographic or Science News.)  Another way is to search the publications index for the periodical, and then search by issue if you know what issue you need. This was recently helpful for a class we had–they are required to actually use the magazine, regardless of how they found it.  Using the InfoTrac search options, they could easily locate the issue, article, and page numbers, so that when they requested the magazine, they could find the information.  The downside, at least for National Geographic, is that their index only goes back to 1977; the paper index from 1889-1989 is then helpful, if your library has it.  Ours has both the paper catalog and magazine issues back to 1922.  Using Infotrac this way is much simpler than going to the individual magazine’s websites to use their archive searches; using the archives on Nat. Geo. online can be very frustrating, as many articles are not full text.  ScienceNews.org is a little more friendly, but some content may still be blocked if you are not an online subscriber. Try it out! 

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.”