5. Library Catalog
• How to Find Books
• How to Find Journals
6. Databases
• Search for Articles
• Find Articles
Once you decide which articles you want to read, you need to find out if the Library has access to the journals where the articles appear.
The first step is to look for a Full Text indicator (button, icon, link) within the article citation. In Academic Search Elite, both icons and text are used. In this example the article is available in HTML (text, no images) and PDF (page images). To see this article, just click the link for the format you prefer.
Sometimes, the full text article is not available in the database. Some of the results of our voting patterns search are like the example below - no full text links in the citation. When the database does not have full text links for the article, use the Find It! button.
Use Find It! to Get the Article
When the citation does not have a full text link, look for Find It!, which links from citations in databases to articles in electronic journals. You will find Find It! links in most of our databases.
To find the article in the above citation, start by clicking the Find It! button or link. Find It! always generates a menu with options for finding that specific article. Here's the Find It! menu for the article cited above:
We have a subscription to the journal, so the first option is to connect to the article. Just click the GO button associated with the "Full text available" line, and you'll be connected to the journal on the publisher's website. With most journals you'll be connected directly to the article. Sometimes you'll be connected to the table of contents and you'll have to browse a bit for your article.
If we do not have access to the electronic version of the journal, the menu will say that no full text is available. Then you'll have to try the Library Catalog or other options on the Find It! menu.
And notice that the Find It! menu offers additional options: linking to Link+, Ask-A-Librarian, connecting to Google for a search on the topic of the article.
Donald Page * (909) 869-3170 * djpage@csupomona.edu *
last updated March 2008