Help
Publications.gov.au provides a number of features to help you find Australian Government publications.
If you know all or some of the title or other information about the publication such as Author or ISBN try the Search for a Publication or the Advanced Search for a Publication available from the Home page.
If you know the subject areas of the publication, (e.g. environment, water), try the Search for a Publication or try to Find an Australian Government Website that contains content related to those areas. You may find the publication you are looking for by browsing on an Australian Government website. The Find an Australian Government Website features are available from the Home page.
A list of Other Publication Resources is available from most pages of the website. The Other Publication Resources panel contains links to lists of other government resources that may further assist you in finding publications.
Publications.gov.au links to publications and other material on Australian Government websites and held in Australian libraries. Australian Government agencies are responsible for the publishing and distribution of their publications. Publications.gov.au does not directly sell or otherwise provide publications but aims to help you find the publication you are seeking and information on how to obtain it from a library or from the publishing agency.
Further details on the features offered by Publications.gov.au can be found below.
How to find an Australian Government Publication
Search for a Publication
If you know the title or subject areas or any other detail of the publication you are looking for you can try the Search for a Publication which is available from the home and Search for a Publication Results pages.
The Publication search is a search of both text found on Australian Government agency websites and a catalogue of Australian Government publications held by Australian libraries. The library catalogue is supplied by the National Library of Australia. The search results provide either a link to matching content on the associated Australian Government web site or to a matching library catalogue page. Library catalogue pages contain links to a contact information page for each library holding the publication and, in some cases, also provide links to the publication on the internet.
The Search for a Publication box allows several search words to be entered separated by spaces, e.g. healthy childcare. A search for a phrase may be performed by enclosing the phrase in double quotes, e.g. "staying healthy in childcare". The Search for a Publication search is powered by Funnelback search technology. Searchers may be further interested in the search syntax supported by this technology.
Search results are ranked according to a complex algorithm that has been found to provide effective ranking of search results. The ranking algorithm takes into account where the term appears in the document, the length of the document and the frequency of the search terms in the document. Ranking is also improved if the search terms appear in the document title or in the URL pointing to the document.
The Search for a Publication looks within content found on websites within the Australian Government domain, i.e. .gov.au and from specific sites in other domains, e.g. www.abc.net.au and www.csiro.au. Content from the States and Territories, e.g. nsw.gov.au, vic.gov.au is currently excluded from the index.
Find an Australian Government Website
If you do not know the title of the publication you are seeking and are unable to find the publication using the Search for a Publication you can try finding an Australian Government website that publishes content in your areas of interest.
You can Find an Australian Government website from the Publications.gov.au home page using the publishing agency name or key subject words associated with that website, e.g. performing an agency search with "tax" will find the website for the Australian Taxation Office as well as a number of other agency websites associated with this topic, including the Department of Treasury and the Commonwealth Budget websites. Alternatively you can browse lists of Australian Government websites by an A to Z list.
Other Publication Resources
The Other Publication Resources panel contains links to lists of other government resources that may further assist the user in finding publications.
The Other Publication Resources panel is available on most pages throughout the www.publications.gov.au website.
Advanced Search for a Publication
The Advanced Search for a Publication page can be accessed by a link immediately below the Search for a Publication on the home page or via link at the top of all other pages.
The Advanced Search for a Publication provides several search boxes and other options that provide you with greater control over the search. The options are described in more detail below:
- Any of the words
- Search results will contain links to web pages or documents containing any of the search words.
- All the words
- Search results will only contain links to web pages or documents containing all the search words.
- The phrase
- Search results will only contain links to web pages or documents containing the exact phrase.
- Without the words
- Links to any webpage or document that contains the words entered in the "Without the Words" text box will be excluded from the search results. If exclude words are also entered in any of the other search options, the exclude option will take precedence.
- Document format
- The document format allows you to restrict the search to a specified document type. The search results will either contain links to documents in the specified format or to pages containing links to documents in the specified format.
- Within site
- This option allows users to restrict the search to a particular government website. Multiple websites can be searched by separating them by commas, e.g. agimo.gov.au would restrict the search to content found on the AGIMO web site.
- Restrict results to
- This option allows users to restrict results to Government Publications held by Australia libraries or to content found on Australian Government websites.
- Results per page
- The "Results per page" allows you to control how many search results are returned per page of result. The default is twenty results per page.
- Display result descriptions
- The "Display result descriptions" check box allows you to control the display of descriptive text for each link listed in the search results. The descriptive text is summarised from content found on the web page that the search result links to. Turning off the descriptive text will allow more results to be displayed at a time within the viewable area of your web browser. If the "Display result descriptions" contains a tick, descriptions will be displayed, if it is empty, descriptions will not be displayed.
Common page elements
The following links and functions are available on every page of this site.
Header
Includes links to the following www.publications.gov.au static pages and functions: Home; About this site; Help; Contact Us .
Additionally, the header on pages other than the home page contain links to new search, (which takes the user back to the home page to start a new search) and advanced search functionality.
Footer
Includes links to the following www.publications.gov.au static pages and functions: Privacy & Copyright; Disclaimer.
Contacting Us
Please read the About this site for information on how to Contact Us or go directly to the Contact Us page.