ASSIA specialises in curating academic articles relating to social problems such as poverty and overcrowding, crime and violence, disease, addiction, inequality and discrimination. It is useful for students studying social sciences, counselling, policing and social work.

• Go to LibrarySearch 
  
  
• Log in using your CCCU username and password. If you are away from campus, or connecting with your own device over Wi-Fi, you will need to include @canterbury.ac.uk after your CCCU username.
  
  
• Select Find Databases A-Z, then click on A, finally click on the link to ASSIA to open it in a new tab.

You can browse the collections individually, or use the search bar to look for relevant content across all collections. Alternatively, you can limit by theme, time period, or region.

In the List View, you will see thumbnails of the digitized artifacts, with details of the object's title, date, and the collection they come from. You can click on the thumbnail or title to read more in a pop-up box. Click on View Document in the pop-up box to see the number of hits (keywords in context) or click on each thumbnail to view the pages in the document.

You can zoom in to enlarge the images and download them.

In the Frequency View, you can see how many documents appear over time and select date ranges to view.

Advanced searching can be performed within individual collections using Boolean operators AND, OR, or NOT. This does mean that you need to know where you want to search and cannot do complex searches across the collections.

Try searching ASSIA by following the steps outlined below. You’ll practice using some of the most common functions and be ready to search for information for your assignments.

1. Search for the topic “substance use” and men. How many results do you find?
   
   
2. Using the left-hand panel, limit your search results to those published between 2015 and the current day. How many results do you find?
   
   
3. Using the left-hand panel, limit your search results to the geographic location of the United Kingdom – UK. How many results do you find?
   
   
4. Find an interesting article from your results list and see if you can access the full text of the article.
   
   
5. Reflect on the type of information appearing in your search. How will you use this information in your assignments? How could you make your search more specific?

After you have accessed ASSIA, go to Accessibility at the bottom right-hand corner of the page.

Your Learning and Research Librarian will be able to help you make the best use of online resources. For detailed guidance, book a tutorial via the Learning Skills Hub.