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SilverPlatter

What is SilverPlatter

SilverPlatter (using WebSPIRS) is a software platform for electronic indexes, which tell you about articles published in journals. The Philosopher's Index provides citations (no full-text) for the international journals it indexes and many are accompanied by abstracts (short summaries of the contents of each article).

Getting started

SilverPlatter is available from the University Library page. Use your internet browser to go to http://www.une.edu.au/library.

• Choose All databases from the Databases drop-down menu.
• Click on the letter P to go to find Philosopers Index.
• Click on Password link beneath the Philosopher's Index link.
• Note the username and password for Philosopher's Index .
• Click on the Philosopher's Index link.
• Enter your UNE username/password if prompted.
• Enter the username/password for Philosopher's Index.
• Click in Philosopher's Index check box.
• Click on Start Searching.

Once you are in SilverPlatter the screen is split into two:

• The top half offers various ways to search, including Advanced, Thesaurus, Index and Search History. You can also consult the Help, use the search box to type in your terms and limit your searches.
• The bottom half displays the results of your searches, allows you to change the way the records look and gives you choices about printing, saving or emailing your lists of results.

Search strategies

• List the key concepts you want to use, including alternative terms and unique phrasing. Use these to develop a search strategy.
• Type in a word or phrase and click Search.
• Begin your search using broad terms, then refine it if necessary.
• Try separate searches for your keywords and then combine the sets using AND or OR. Hint: use your search history by clicking on the Search History tab.

Varying your search strategy

• The wildcard ? replaces a letter. wom?n will find woman or women.
• * is used to truncate a word. austral* will find australia or australian or australia's or australasian.
•  Use the boolean operator AND to narrow your search: kierkegaard AND hegel will find records mentioning both of these terms.
• The operator OR widens your search and finds records with either or all of the words entered, such as nominalism OR realism.
• Use NOT to exclude unwanted results. nominalism NOT ockham finds records which refer to nominalism but excludes any which also mention William of Ockham. Be careful with NOT as sometimes you eliminate useful articles.

Advanced search

Clicking on the Advanced Search tag lets you focus your search. There are three search boxes where you can type your keywords. You can also choose specific fields to search for each of your terms.

• Select from the options in the dropdown boxes. For example, to find an article about Soren Kierkegaard in the journal called Hibbert Journal:
• enter Hibbert Journal in the first search box
• choose Source from the pull-down menu on the same level.
• enter Kierkegaard in the second search box.
• Click on Search.

Viewing your results

On the bottom half of the screen you will see the brief citation details of the records found by your search.

• Click on the Complete Record button if you want to see all the details about a particular item.
• To see if the journal cited is held at UNE, search in the University Library catalogue for its title. You will find the journal title in the SO: Source (Bibliographic Citation) field. In the catalogue you would try a Browse search using the Journal Title option. If the journal is held, write down its Call Number. The AN: Accession Number in the record is not a UNE Call number.
• The journal title may be given as an abbreviation. To find out the full title, consult the book Periodical Title Abbreviations by asking at the Information Desk, phoning (02) 6773 2458 or Ask a Librarian.

Marking records

• As you go through the list of article citations, mark any of interest by clicking in the box next to each record.
• To see your list of marked records, go to Show at the top left of your results list and select Marked Results from the dropdown box.
• You can view, print, save or email your marked list of references.

Retrieving your results

• Print, save or email your results by clicking on the matching icon (the printer, the disk or the envelope) at the top right of your list of results.
• Each method will offer you some options, such as Change Display, or Clear Marked Records or Print one record per page.
• You can also opt to include your Search History, or the Record number and database name (good for remembering which search strategies and indexes were useful).
• Once you have made your choices, try a Preview or just click on the Print button in the yellow bar at the top of the SilverPlatter screen.
• If you are saving to disk and using UNE computers, please remember to bring your own disk.

Once you have your citations, remember to check the University Library catalogue for the title of the cited journals to see if the volume you want is held in print or electronic form.

Help

Choose an option from the pull-down How do I? menu for in-context help with the page you are working on. Select the Help button in the red bar at the top of the screen for the complete Help manual.

For help with the general principles of using journal indexes, try eSKILLS UNE.