As part of your ENGL102 / 110 course, you will be spending one class session in the library to explore the resources available to you. When your class comes to the library, you have been asked to bring in an article on your chosen topic for an in-class exercise. In order to properly complete this task, you will need to follow the instructions in this tutorial to use our QuickSearch tool for locating your article. You may search for an article on a topic related to your class assignment or on a topic of your choosing.
Ask a Librarian
QuickSearch at Westfield State University, is a tool that searches the library’s catalog for print books, electronic books, and media. In addition, this tool also searches our subscription article databases. This means that you can search for books, articles, and media simultaneously through QuickSearch.
Your task today, is to use the QuickSearch tool to find and print an article on your topic that you can bring to class for an in-class exercise. You may find it helpful to have QuickSearch open in another window or tab so that you can recreate the steps of this tutorial as you read through it.
First you want to enter keywords related to your topic.
If you are using a phrase, you want to make sure to put it in quotations marks as shown below. If you are searching for multiple keywords, you can combine them with the word AND (all uppercase) to require both terms to show up in your results. When you have your terms entered properly, click "Go":
You are now looking at the results screen. The "Format' toolbar on the left lists the types of materials available based on your search terms. You can check the box beside a format to limit your results.
For this particular assignment, you are looking for an article so you will want to select the article box. This will refresh your results list to show you only articles on your topic and remove all other formats.
The page will automaticall refresh, and you will see that only articles are being displayed.
The results list you are looking at now is sorted by relevance with items owned by the Ely Library listed first.
Again, on the left hand side you will see options to limit your results further. In this case, you could limit your articles to "Full text" or "Peer-Reviewed" journals:
When looking at your individual results, if the record indicates that the item is available at Westfield State University Ely Library, you can use the "View Now" link to display databases which have full-text holdings of the article or periodical. That list will populate below the View Now option and contain links titled "View full text".
Often you will have several options for viewing the full text of an article. You can select any of the options on the list; however, the final results may vary.
Some links will take you directly to the full text of the article, while others will bring you to the main page of the journal that holds your article.
If the link you chose doesn't bring you to the specific article you wanted, you have two options:
1) You can go back to your full text list and select a different link:
2) You can use the search within option of the journal page and copy/paste the title of your article to find it in that publication.
This will bring you a results list with the article you want and a full text option to print for class as shown below.
**Please keep in mind that not all journal pages will look exactly like this example, but you still want to use a search within function. This means either looking for a search box on the journal page, or a link that says "search within this publication".
SOMETHING TO KEEP IN MIND
Sometimes, you will come across an article that is not available at the Ely Library, but can be requested from another library.
In that case, the record would indicate the item is available through World Cat Libraries.
When this is the case, you can click on the blue title of the article to see more information. This will open a new page that will show you availability and give you an opportunity to put in a request for interlibrary loan.
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