There are two ways to search the Australian Common Reader database: the Explore page enables you to filter results using a visual guided search, and the home search page offers a keyword search (using the search box) and a faceted search, which enables you to apply a number of filters to find the information you need.

For example, if you would like to find out what books were borrowed by women in the database, you can filter by 'borrower gender' in the browse bar: click on 'borrower gender' and then 'female'. The results will then show all loans by women borrowers. The browse bar will now show information about the loans by women in the database: for example, click on 'Book Title' to see all titles borrowed by women (and the number of times they were borrowed). Likewise for book authors, and the names and occupations of borrowers.

You can add further filters by clicking on fields in the browse bar (e.g. a particular title, author, borrower or occupation), or within the search results: for example, if you would like to know how many women borrowed Miles Franklin's My Brilliant Career, you can click on the title in the record. You can then filter by library to see how many women borrowed that novel at each different library, or by occupation, or by individual titles by Franklin. At any point you can remove a filter by clicking on the x next to that field in the "you searched for" field at the top of the page.

Further examples:

If you would like to find out how popular works by Charles Dickens were in these libraries, you can search by "Dickens" in the search bar. In the search results, clicking on "Charles Dickens" will reveal all loans by Dickens. You can then filter by occupation to see how popular Dickens' works were with miners, teachers, etc. You can also filter by individual book titles, eg. clicking on "Great Expectations" will reveal all loans of this work, which you can then filter by gender, library, or occupation.

If you would like to see what Matthew Charlton, the fifth leader of the ALP, borrowed from the Lambton Mechanics' institute in his time there, you can search "Charlton" in the search box, and click on "Matthew Charlton" in the results. This will reveal all loans by Charlton. You can then explore the popularity of the works he borrowed by clicking on a title (e.g. "The Last of the Mohicans") and then removing the filter "Matthew Charlton." You will then see all loans of The Last of the Mohicans across the libraries.

At any point you can export your search results as a .csv file that you can then save and sort, graph etc using Excel or Numbers.

You can explore the database using our visualisations. For example, the 'author' chart shows the proportion of loans of books by each author in the database. Clicking on "Nat Gould" will filter the data by that author: the "borrower" chart will show all of the people who borrowed works by Gould; the "gender" chart will show the men/women who borrowed his books, and so on. You can then explore the data by clicking on individual borrowers, libraries, works, authors, gender, and occupation. At any point you can remove a filter by clicking on the x next to the filter at the top of the page.