The LRC provides access to multiple subscription databases that are accessible through its website (lrc.sgscol.ac.uk). One of these databases is Infotrac, provided by the Gale Group. Infotrac offers the following description of its services:

Perfect for researchers at all levels, General OneFile includes more than 8,000 full-text titles; more than 3,600 journals; more than 25 years of backfile; and five newspaper indexes — totaling more than 13,000 titles in all (70% of which are unique to the resource).All available through the easy-to-use Gale PowerSearch platform.

With more than 100 million records at researchers’ fingertips, General OneFile provides instant 24/7 access to the largest collection of full-text periodicals available.In addition, General OneFile also features more than 500 travel guides; a full collection of National Public Radio programs from 1990 to the present, including searchable transcripts; links to over 5,000 video files including shows like the Today Show, NBC Nightly News, NRO TV and Meet the Press; more than 3,000 full-text titles recommended by Bowker’s “Magazines for Libraries”; optional access to the Gale Virtual Reference Library, containing more than 1,600 complete volumes of reference content; and much more.

(If you’re trying to access the LRC site from home, you can reach it by clicking the links on eCampus, Sharepoint, Moodle, the SGS college website or by visiting lrc.sgscol.ac.uk.)

After supplying your login details (or not if on campus) you will be brought to the Infotrac homepage:

There are a number of ways to search within Infotrac, but the large amount of articles to sift through means that sometimes a simple search can bring up too much information. Here are some methods to help you find the information you need.

Topic Finder

If you click Topic Finder You will be taken to the following screen. You can input a search term in the bar highlighted by red dots in the diagram.

 After typing in your search term and clicking Search you will be taken to the following screen:

 Your topic will be split into large subjections in the inner wheel and then smaller subsections in the outer wheel. The sections with the most articles are larger and coloured red, the smaller sections are coloured green and have less articles. In the example above the search term impressionism  brought up the wheel pictured. The main categories are: Monet, Impressionist, Modern Art, Pictures, Music, New York. If we click Claude Monet on the outer wheel then a list of articles about this topic will appear in the Results column on the right hand side of the screen:

There are 19 articles on this topic. Clicking on the third article in the list brings up the following article:

 Searching By Subject Guide

 An alternative way to search for something on Infotrac is through their subject guide system. From the homepage click the Subject Guide button highlighted on the following screenshot:

After clicking you will be taken to the following screen where you can type the subject you are interested in in the search box highlighted. Autocomplete will offer acceptable subject options to you as you type.

After searching for your term, Infotrac will separate it into different areas. In the example below we searched for impressionism. Infotrac has broken it into topics such as Impressionism (Art); Impressionism (Literature); Impressionism, Art, leisure, and Parisian Society (Nonfiction work); etc. You can click any of these topics, or break them into further subdivisions by clicking the ‘+’ symbol below them, or browse related subjects by clicking the link below that.

If you break the topic down further by clicking the ‘+’ symbol you will see a list similar to that below:

In the example shown, if we click on the subject link for the topic Impressionism (Art) we will get the following list of articles:

The list of articles is filtered to show magazines, but there are lots of options in the column on the right to show items such as “Academic Journals” or to filter for results containing images, etc. depending on what type of information you are searching for. Showing results for Academic Journals will ensure thatany information is peer reviewed and suitable to be quoted in an essay.

Benefits of Using Infotrac