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Kenneth J. Shouldice Library Help Me!
Finding an Online Article
There are two issues here,
- Finding an article that is online when
you're off campus and don't have access to the
paper collection and the "Search for full text"
links won't work, or
- Finding an article that is full text while
you're on campus, but you don't want to mess
around with paper copies of journals.
Find online articles from off-campus
To access articles from off-campus, login to your My.LSSU account. Click
on the My Library tab. The databases should be listed on the left side
of the page, by category. They should all work from off-campus, if you
go through the My Library tab. You may have to explore a little, to pick
a database that has the type of information you seek (academic, general,
research, subject specific, etc.), and has (some) material full-text. There
are too many databases to provide recommendations and specifics here, but if
you send a note to a reference
librarian, including information about the type of project you're
doing and the type of information you seek, we will try to suggest a
database or two that will best
meet your needs. Picking a database that covers your topic while still
providing a useful amount of full text material is the most important
issue in this endeavor. A great topic-database that has no full-text
will not be useful to you, nor will a full text database that only does
a so-so job of meeting your information needs. So you need to explore a
little. There are a few databases that offer all full text materials,
Wilson Select Plus, Psych Articles, InfoTrac Custom
120 Full Text Newspapers, and most of Lexis-Nexis Academic
Universe. There may be others, and there may be some things in
those databases that aren't full text, but most of the information will
be. In choosing a database other than the ones I've mentioned, look for
a database that covers the topic area you seek, and one in which a
simple search or two yields half or more of the articles on the first
results page to be full text.
Once you've picked a database, you may wish to hunt around on the search
page to see if there is a limiter that will provide only
articles that are full text as results. Most databases have that option
somewhere on the search screen. Once you've clicked on that, your
searches should yield only full text articles as results.
Finding online articles while on campus
You may search for online articles in two ways while on campus.
First, the way to absolutely guarantee that you will get full text
articles is to search as described above. But since you're on campus,
and the Search for full text links should work, you might want to
take advantage of the power this gives you. It takes more steps, and
you'll have to check each article to see if it's available full text,
but you'll have access to all the materials we have in full text.
First, pick an appropriate database.
As stated before, you may have to explore a little to pick
a database that has the type of information you seek (academic, general,
research, subject specific, etc.), and has (some) material full-text. There
are too many databases to provide recommendations and specifics here, but if
you send a note to a reference
librarian about the type of information you need, and the type of
project you are trying to complete, we will try to suggest a database or
two that will best
meet your needs. Picking a database that covers your topic while still
providing a useful amount of full text material, or material that is
available in one of our other databases, is the most important
issue in this endeavor. A great topic-database that has no full-text of
its own, and little or no full text available from other databases,
will not be useful to you, nor will a full text database that only does
a so-so job of meeting your information needs. So you need to explore a
little. There are a few databases that offer all full text materials,
Wilson Select Plus, Psych Articles, InfoTrac Custom
120 Full Text Newspapers, and most of Lexis-Nexis Academic
Universe. There may be others, and there may be some things in
those databases that aren't full text, but most of the information will
be. In choosing a database other than the ones I've mentioned, look for
a database that covers the topic area you seek, and one in which a
simple search or two yields a few of the articles on the first
results page to be full text.
So, choose a database and fill in the search boxes with the search terms
that you believe will give you good results. Sift through the results to
identify articles that you think will meet your needs. When you find a
likely looking article, click on the title of the article. In most of
our databases, that will take you to a page that provides citation
information and an abstract. Look over the abstract, to determine if
the article will be useful to you. Also, search around this page for a
list of subject headings. If you can find a subject heading that exactly
covers your topic, you'll want to click on it, and go to the listing or
articles that have that subject heading. While looking at the page with
the abstract, look for a full text link. If the database offers full
text, a link from this page is the easiest way to see it. If it gives
you a choice between a PDF and HTML, choose the PDF. It should look like
a photocopy of the original article. If there is no direct link to full
text from this page, search for a Search for full text link.
This link will open a new window, and alert you to full text options. If
the item is available full text in only one other database, it should
open at this point. If it is available in more than one database, it
should list the databases that offer the article full text. You should
be able to click a link to one of those databases (check to make sure
the year you seek is available full text in the database you choose) and
grab the full text. If there is no full text, but the journal is
available in our paper collection, a Voyager screen should open...
sometimes this indicates not that we own it, but that NMU owns the item,
so you have to carefully check this. Finally, if it's not available in
full text or paper, you will have the option of interlibrary loaning the
item. It takes a few clicks to search for full text, but can produce
great results, and you get to take advantage of all of our full text
journals!
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