Accessing Full Text
On day 1, we learned that a library database is a collection of information resources (like articles, images, etc.) and information about those resources (like authors' names, titles, dates of publication, summaries, etc.)
But that was a simplification. Some databases contain the full text of articles but some databases only have the information about an article, but not the article itself. And others are a mix of those two things.
What good is that, you ask?
Even a database that does not contain the full text of an article is still helpful in telling you that the article exists. And once you've found the basic information about an article you want, there are always ways of getting the full text.
But Isn't Everything Available on the Internet for Free?
The open web has many amazing free resources, even many scholarly, peer-reviewed articles are available for free, (we call this open access). But not everything. Some journal publishes keep their articles behind a paywall. You may have seen something like this before:
This is an example of a journal publisher that charges for access to articles, either through a per-article fee, or through a subscription fee to access all the content in a journal. One of the main jobs of libraries is to purchase subscriptions so our patrons don't have to pay.
But library subscriptions can be very expensive. A journal that costs one person $199 a year for a subscription might cost the library several thousand dollars because we give access to our whole community. Sadly, this means we can't buy access to everything. That's why some databases don't have full text.
What to Look For
In a library database, you might see the following possibilities associated with each article:
Linked Full Text - The library subscribes to this journal. Click this link, and the browser will open a new tab or window. Usually, you're directed to the article on the publisher's website, and you can read the article there, or download a pdf.
PDF Full Text - The article is available in this database. Click this link to open the PDF of the article.
Find Full Text - We may not have a subscription to this resource, but we can still find it. Click to search all of the library and all of the internet to find the full text. Sometimes, the article is available to the public. Find Full Text will do its best to find it.
What if I click Find Full Text, and I get this?
Scroll down! Click the Request Item through Interlibrary Loan button:
The Interlibrary Loan request button will direct you to a form autofilled with info about the article. After you submit this request, we'll find another library with access to that resource and send you a link to access the requested item. Sometimes this takes less than a day, but usually it's between 2 and 5 business days.
Interlibrary Loan is completely free to you. No library can afford access to everything, but we still want you to have the best resources to do your work. Don't be shy about using this option.
Saving Articles for Later
Once you have found the full text of an article in a database you may want to save it for later. You can always download a copy to your computer but some folks prefer to email it to themselves or to copy the link. Here's what to look for:
Share/Send
To email an article to yourself or other group members look for icons labeled Email, Share or Send To like this:
Permalink
Be careful about copying the link to an article. The article URL at the top of your browser might be temporary. Many students have been disappointed to find that the links they carefully saved didn't work the next day. Your best bet is to find the Permalink:
In other databases it might look slightly different, but look for options labeled Permalink or Get Link, like these:
Challenge!
On Day 2, you identified a database you might use to find scholarly articles for your chosen subject.
Today, open that database, and try a search for the topic.
Look at the first 10 results. For how many of those articles is the full text immediately available?
To complete the challenge, add the following information to your Database Challenge Worksheet:
- the name of the database you used
- the search terms you entered
- how many of the first 10 articles had full text immediately available