Children's literature
Starting point contains definitions, facts, figures and overviews
- Dictionaries help you to define your keywords
- Encyclopedias help you to get an overview of your topic and provide more information
than a dictionary
- Handbooks and manuals provide figures and facts
| Australian children's books | Part of the Australian Government culture and recreation portal this site provides access to information about many aspects of children's literatute including authors, history, awards and publishers |
Use the catalogue
to search for more dictionaries, encyclopedias and handbooks
You can search the Library Catalogue to find books, DVDs, journals and other materials
If you know the exact title in the New catalogue
- At the search screen select a Title search
- Type in the exact title. You can use double quotes around phrases, for example, “room with a view”
- Link to online material or take note of the collection, call number and status to find items in the Library
If you are searching for a topic in the New catalogue
- Type in keywords from your topic to find catalogue records that contain all of your keywords
For example,
+"children's literature" +australia
- Use + before a word to indicate that the word must be included
- Another way of doing this is to combine keywords with AND (the AND must be in upper case)
- If a keyword search gives you too many results, you could add another keyword with +
For example, +"children's literature" +australia +fiction
Truncation is generally not needed as entering any version of a word will retrieve many variations.
More information
- For more information select the catalogue Help button
Databases and journal articles for Children's literature
Use databases to search for journal articles, book chapters, conference papers or
research reports
|
Databases |
Notes |
Help |
| AustLit the resource for Australian literature | AustLit's focus is Australian literature which includes children's literature. It provides full text access to a collection of critical articles and creative writing as well as indexing other resources related to Australian writing. | Help is available from within the database. |
| JSTOR Arts & sciences I-VI collection | Provides page images of back issues of the core scholarly journals in the arts and sciences from the earliest issues to within a few years of current publication. Users may browse by journal title or discipline, or may search the full-text or citations/abstracts. New issues of existing titles and new titles are added on an ongoing basis. | A video demonstration is available on JSTOR's home page or use the "tips" link from within JSTOR. |
| ERIC | ERIC, the U.S. Department of Educational Resources Information Center database, contains indexing and abstracts from thousands of research and technical reports in the Resources In Education Index (RIE) and from education-related journals in the Current Index to Journals in Education. | Help and tips are available from Ebscohost or Cambridge Scientific Abstracts search screens. |
Full text not available?
When the full text is not available, search for the journal title in the Library
catalogue to discover if print or online copies are available
Database search tips
- Define your topic and identify the main concepts involved
For example teenage horror stories
- Make a list of keywords for each concept
For example
teenage, adolescent, young adult
horror, horror stories, horror fiction
- Think about how you can combine these keywords in your search using OR, AND or
NOT
Keywords on the same concept combine with an OR
Combine different concepts with an AND
For example
teenage OR adolescent OR young adult
and
horror OR horror stories OR horror fiction
- Appropriate truncation symbols can be used in databases to find variations of
a word, for example teenage* finds teenage, teenager, teenagers and so on
For help with searching databases see Connecting and Combining Search Terms or Truncation/Wildcards/Phrase searching: Basic or Online training or Ask the Library
It is important to critically evaluate all information you find particularly
information found on the web.
This is a starting list of internet sites. You may want to do your own searches
using
search engines
- Australian children's books Part of the Australian Government culture and recreation portal this site provides access to information about many aspects of children's literatute including authors, history, awards and publishers.
- Children's Book Council of Australia Provides information about awards and events including children's book awards, conferences, children's book week and other activities.
- Centre for International Research in Childhood (CIRCL) The Centre for International Research in Childhood is based at the University of Reading in Reading, England. The centre aims to promote and coordinate international and interdisciplinary academic research in childhood, focusing particularly on research in children and culture, children's literature, and children and the media.
- Insideadog The Centre for Youth Literature, State Library Victoria promotes reading as an active, pleasurable and essential activity for all young people. We believe that reading is not just something that is done as school work
For further information about any of these resources please contact the
Ask the Library service or ask at the library desk
Coordinated by: EASS AL team