Infotrac (Academic ASAP)


See Search Tips

If you need a magazine or journal article on any topic, for any class, this is the first place you should look.

Note: Please be patient. Infotrac can take a long time to load, but will work quickly after that. It often loads more quickly on Internet Explorer than Netscape Navigator.

What is Infotrac?

Infotrac is a database of articles mostly from magazines and journals. Many of the articles are available as full-text; some include graphics. Non full-text articles are in either citation or abstract format. In this case, please see a librarian so we can help you with accessing the full-text version.

[A citation includes the title of the article, the title and date of the journal, and the pages numbers. An abstract includes the above information in addition to a short summarizing paragraph.]

What journals are available from Infotrac?

There are two ways of finding out if a publication is included in the database:

• The easiest way is to access the advanced search page and type the following in the search box: jn=Newsweek (Newsweek is just an example--fill in the name of any journal).

• Click here or go to Infotrac's Title List link on their search page to see a full alphabetical listing of all of the publications included in Infotrac's database. The entries include full-text information and the available dates for each publication.

What years are covered?

Many journals offer full text articles back through the 1990's. Citations and abstracts sometimes go back to the 1980's, but everything depends upon the magazine or journal.

Search tips

• A Subject Guide search (the default) allows you to search for subject headings that contain your search words.
  
• A Relevance search returns items ranked with percentages of the number of times that search terms appear within the articles. The best way to do a relevance search is to enter more than one term in the text box; narrowing down your topic will increase your odds of finding a relevant article.
• A Keyword search will search every section of the articles for the search words, including the text, title, abstract, author, and captions.
  
• An Advanced search provides more options, including title, author and journal searches.
  

Limiting a Search: If the results list of a search is overwhelmingly long, some searches may produce hundreds of results, you may limit your results. This "Limit Search" option is found in the blue bar on the left of the results page. Clicking on this option opens a new screen offering the following limitations: to articles with text, refereed publications, by date, or to a specific journal.

Viewing Results: The results page offers the bibliographic data of each of the returned articles. Not every article is available in full text. Look for the notation designating the result as an article, abstract or citation. If the article is not full-text, a print or microfiche/film version may be in the library. Please see a librarian for assistance.

Receiving Results: You may choose to print an article or email it to yourself. Please follow the instructions below the article. You may also mark articles to print them all at once. This option will save on paper.

If you have any questions concerning Infotrac, please see a librarian.