Researching

Staff and students are welcome to ask for help locating resources in the library or when researching online. Our library resources can also be searched online at

National Library of Australia’s database relating to Australian records and digital content from libraries, museums, galleries, universities, archives and other data collection organisations. Consider obtaining their library card which will give you full access to their eResources databases. Membership is free, however you can still access many of their eResource databases without having a library card. The National Library of Australia also offers a comprehensive collection of Research Guides.

How to use Trove to find History sources

Northern Territory Library

The premier public research library for Northern Territory’s culture and history. Search their digital depository, NT public libraries catalogue or access eResources with your NT public library card.

Free online journal and research databases

A document providing a list with links to current online journal and research databases

Browser searching tools

Narrow down your search to a particular domain

Add site: and a domain name
Educational site eg. ancient Rome site:edu
Government site eg. ancient Rome site:gov
Australian sites only eg. ancient Rome site:edu.au

Examples of domains include	2 letter domains for countries
gov – Government go – some countries use .go only edu – Educational org – Organisations (non-profit) mil – Military com – commercial net – Network organisations	au – Australia uk – United Kingdom cn – China in – India ie – Ireland

Website analysis

To determine if a website is a credible and valid source, apply CARP principles:

To delve deeper, consider using lateral reading to evaluate whether a website is real, fake or credible.

Fake News Infographic

Using Boolean Searching

Use quotes to minimise results

“Ancient Rome” will return results where those words are side-by-side only

Use AND to limit your results

Air AND pollution “ancient Rome” should return results where both Air and Pollution in ancient Rome are mentioned in the same article

Use NOT to limit results in a different way

Searching for – “Air Pollution” NOT sky – should force Google to return results without any mention of sky pollution

Use OR to expand your results

Searching for – Global OR worldwide “Air pollution” – should force Google to return results for both Global and its synonym, increasing your results.