Struggling to find academic material for your assignment, research proposal, or thesis?The Library can help with a literature search—a systematic and comprehensive search for published academic resources on your topic.
How to request a literature search:
Complete our online form or use the Unisa Student App (available on the Android Play Store and iStore). In the app, go to Library and select Literature Search Form.
Gale's Powersearch is the platform to search across the Gale database.
There are Three Basic Search Options on the Homepage:
By Subject: Use to search for topics such as academic disciplines, companies, events, laws, geographic locations, organizations, people, etc.
By Keyword: Lets you search on significant fields in documents, including titles, introductory text, authors, and subject terms.
By Entire Document: Looks for any word or words within the entire text of all documents in the database(s) you are searching, as well as in the fields of information included in the Keyword search.
You can also browse:
Browse Subjects: Browse listings of subjects, people, products, locations and organizations then select a term and see a list of results, or navigate through the Subject Guide by selecting subdivision and related subjects links.
Browse Publications: Use to browse and view the contents of a specific publication.
Advanced Search: Select an index and combine search terms and limiters for the most precise searches.
One Search: Cross-searches the Gale products to which your library subscribes (including the PowerSearch databases you have selected from the Database Menu), and if enabled by your library, any available third-party databases from other publishers, and select public free and fee-based websites. One Search maps your results into a graphical display arranged into categories.