Search Smarter – using Index New Zealand (video transcript)
Index New Zealand (INNZ) is a database that lets you search more than half a million articles from magazines, websites and newspapers.
You can find INNZ at http://innz.natlib.govt.nz.
Simple search in INNZ
Say you have to write an essay about New Zealand artist Colin McCahon. Using INNZ, you’ll be able to find New Zealand publications about Colin McCahon, including things you won’t find on Google.
Enter your search term – for example, Colin McCahon – into the search box on the INNZ homepage. If you put quote marks around your search term – “Colin McCahon” – it will improve the accuracy of your search.
After clicking the search button, INNZ will bring up a results page. On the results page you can see the name of the article, where it was published, and what the date was. You also get a summary of the article, called an abstract. This could give you all the information you need, or at least help you decide if you want to go and find this article at your library.
Change the order of your search results
You can order your results on this page in four ways, using the dropdown menu above the results list.
- ‘Relevance’ is the default setting. The more red dots there are in the Relevance column, the closer the results are to the search term you entered.
- ‘By Article Title’ puts your results in alphabetical order – handy if you have a vague memory of an article your lecturer mentioned.
- ‘With Latest year first’ puts the most recently-published articles at the top of the list.
- ‘With earliest year’ first puts the oldest articles first.
In the search on Colin McCahon, the earliest result is an article from 1945. This is where INNZ is really handy. The National Library adds old publications to INNZ as well as new ones.
Refine your search results
There are several ways to refine your search results. For example, you can add more words after your original search term in the search box.
Typing the word ‘review’ after ‘Colin McCahon’ restricts the results to just reviews. Typing the word ‘’Listener’ after ‘Colin McCahon’ brings up just items published in the New Zealand Listener.
Get links to online articles
Typing ‘http’ after your search term limits your search to results that have a link to website.
When you get your search results, open the record you’re interested in. On the record page, click the link after the green words “Link to text”. This will take you to the website where the article appears.
