Campion Library: Sciences Research Guides: Making and Mining Minerals

Click on the image to zoom in to the different sections.

USEFUL LINKS

Australian mineral facts
Australia produces 19 useful minerals in significant amounts, from over 350 operating mines. From these minerals, useful materials such as metals can be extracted.

Australia is one of the world's leading producers of bauxite (aluminium ore), iron ore, lithium, gold, lead, diamond, rare earth elements, uranium, and zinc. Australia also has large mineral sand deposits of ilmenite, zircon and rutile. In addition, Australia produces large quantities of black coal, manganese, antimony, nickel, silver, cobalt, copper and tin.
Oxford University Museum of Natural Histroy
Minerals are among the most beautiful objects in nature, and they are used to make objects you use every day of your life - including the computer you are looking at right now! Read on to discover more about them.
Australian Mines Atlas
The Australian Mines Atlas is an interactive online mapping tool that provides information on Australian minerals resources, mines and processing centres.

VIDEOS

Videos are are another information source that can be used for research. A playlist on this topic has been created for you.

Plate Tectonics Playlist on ClickView

Research is a process with many steps, and is rarely linear. A good researcher uses multiple sources and continually goes back and reviews their question and keeps adding new vocabulary and learning to their search. This Libguide has been created to provide support for your research.

DIGITAL RESOURCES

The following PREMIUM DIGITAL RESOURCES may be useful for research in this subject . However they are password protected and when you click on any of the icons below you will be re-directed to a page that requires authentication.

The Gale Virtual Reference Library has a comprehensive collection of e-books. You can browse individual titles or do a search for your topic.The gale virtual reference library has a comprehensive collection of e-books. You can browse individual titles or do a search for your topic.

Encyclopedias are good starting points for research in this topic. You will find the correct facts in language that is at an appropriate reading level.

The World Geography Database has easy to read articles on a range of topics related to plate tectonics.

Type in plate tectonics or your topic and click search. There are several short video clips on many of the topics.

Before starting your research, it is good practice to think about and create a list of keywords that you can use to search for information on your topic. Google is very intuitive however databases usually require a search string. Here are a few tips to help you.

Words are sometimes spelled differently, for example, colonization is sometimes written as colonisation.
Many search engines and databases use Boolean logic to construct a search term. The asterisk is known as a wild card. The use of AND, OR and NOT can also be helpful.
Sometimes it is useful to use other words that mean similar or the same thing (synonyms)
Use quotation marks when you are searching for a phrase.
Using keywords that relate to the topic will focus the search

Suggestions for this topic:

earthquake resistant buildings

earthquake-proof buildings

architecture OR "building design" AND earthquakes

"convection currents" AND "plate movements"

LIBRARY CATALOGUE

DEWEY DECIMAL

You can use Oliver to find books in the library however sometimes it is helpful to know the Dewey numbers for a subject. In doing so you will be able to find books on that subject in most libraries. It will also be useful at those times when you know the topic but don't know where to start looking.

550	Earth Sciences
551.1	Properties of the earth
551.2	Volcanoes & earthquakes
551.4	Geomorphology & hyrdosphere

REFERENCING

The Referencing Libguide has resources on how to cite/reference sources in research.

The Online Reference Generator allows you to create citations and bibliographies using the Harvard Referencing Style for a comprehensive list of resources.

MyBib is a free online service that allows users to generate citations and bibliographies. You can paste in a DOI, ISBN or URL and have the fields populate automatically. However it does not always provide the correct reference so you must check that all possible parts of the reference have been included.