The Australia/New Zealand Reference Centre (ANZRC)

         ANZRC

I recently "attended" the ANZRC webinar. This EBSCOhost resource is very useful due to both the broad and far reaching content available and also the comprehensive tools a user is able to employ in their search.

The content types available include popular magazines and journals, transcripts of radio and TV programs (eg. 7.30 Report), academic magazines and journals, photos and videos, some reference items (books), and biographical material.

Some of the main subject areas covered by ANZRC are Science (including junior educational materials), Maths,  Health, Environmental, Society & Culture, Archaeology, History, Library Science, Economics, Business, Legal, and Geo-politics (eg. reports on states and countries).

As mentioned the wide array of search tools make narrowing your "target list" very easy.  Searches are sorted by relevance to the terms of the enquiry and can be adjusted (limited or broadened) with a range of facets - provided to the left of the search results:

• Full Text  (Interestingly, most material is available in full text)
• Image Quick View  (Items with images)
• Publication Date  (Using an intuitive slider you can set the earliest and latest publication dates)
• Single or multiple Subject Headings can be applied
• Source Types can also be selected according to whether they are Magazines or Trade Publications, or whether they originate in Australia (domestic) or overseas (international).
• Further search limiters are available under the link "Show More".  (These limiters are also accessible through the Advanced Search mode.)

Advanced searches can also include boolean terms AND, OR, NOT, as well as the use of wild cards, to enable more sophisticated search strategies.

Once opened individual items can be linked to your assignments or documents with Permalinks.  Also HTML files can easily be translated to other languages or even read out to the user.

For even more features you can create an account.  Amongst other things, creating an account allows you to:

• Create named folders in which to store your results.
• Set up alerts to let you know when new material in a particular journal or subject area becomes available. 

I hope this overview of some of ANZRC's notable features has been interesting if not useful.

Guy.