Finding hard copies of sources has become one of the biggest hurdles in conducting research, especially if you are looking for articles. With the internet, it's easy to find if a source exists, but often you can only access sources through a library. The systems involved are complicated and don't always communicate well with each other. Plus you often end up on publishers' websites, where they want you to pay for an article.
There are multiple ways to get to article and book citations, plus another hundred ways to access the hard copies, not to mention a million things that can trip researchers up along the way. Use the information on this page to track down hard copies of materials. BUT please ask for help if you hit a block - this is one of the most common issues in research today and the reference librarians are trained to help you overcome these obstacles.
The most common way we tend to find citations is by searching databases. While you will find the full text of articles in some databases, you will also find many instances where the full text of the article is not in the database itself. When this happens, click on the yellow FindIt! button.
The FindIt! button essentially does three things:
To request an item from Interlibrary Loan, all you'll need is your Gustavus user name and password. You'll be prompted to log on and then follow the instructions to create an ILL request. Remember that ILL is free for you. It typically takes only a day or two for articles to be emailed from the lending library to you.
The one exception is if you're searching books in the Gustavus Library catalog. When you find a book that we don't have in our library, click the title. From there, you can request it via ILL (look for the options in the right hand side of the screen).
If anything goes wonky with this process, please ask. Ask a reference librarian, email me directly or come to the front desk of the library. There are enough odd hiccups in how the systems talk to each other that things sometimes go off track. We want to help you solve any issues you have accessing the hard copies of sources.
You can also find more details on the Interlibrary Loan page.
In many cases, before you can track down hard copies of materials, you need to know what kind of source you have. Use this checklist if you are working off a bibliography or some other list of sources. Here are some of the most common citations, including identifying indicators (note that citations will look different in various citation styles):
For examples of how citations look in various citation styles, visit our Cite Your Sources guide. Once you've decoded your citation, use the boxes below to track down hard copies.
If you have a journal citation:
If you are searching for articles through a database or want to browse articles in print:
If you have a book citation:
A word about Google Books...