How to find articles in the library

Or…navigating the e-world of scholarly materials

In the old days, it was pretty simple (if tedious)…

You checked an index (in print),

You looked up the topic you were researching… “mannerism”

And found a good article

OK, first it’s important to “read” the citation

This is an article entitled “Bacchiacca: mannerist with perfect manners,” written by G. Rosenthal, published in Art News, volume 59, January, 1961, pages

(Most of the old indexes had abbreviation guides at the front)

So, your only question in your quest for this article was, “Did the library own Art News ?

So, you checked the catalog…

Looks good….

Keep going…

Just one more screen…

Ta da!

The ever-handy “pink sheet”

Has a guide to call numbers and the floors they’re on…

All N’s (N-NZ), or art materials, are on the 9 th floor

So you’d go up to that floor….

Find the bound volumes of Art Journal…

Locate the volume on the shelf…

Find the right issue…

Turn to page 42…

And, voila!

I know…pretty exhausting, eh?

Fortunately, you live in the 21 st century!!

Where everything’s online! (Well, almost…..)

Most of our indexes are now online

And so are more & more of our journals

Take, for example, Art Index Retrospective…

It contains the complete Art Index from 1929 to 1984.

Searching for “mannerism” here brings up 157 “hits”

Suppose you wanted to look at number 8

Again, whether online or in print, you have to “read” the citation

TI: Studies in the history of tapestry Renaissance and MannerismAU: Standen,-E.-ASO: Apollo (London, England) ns 114 July p. 20-8DE: Raphael, DT: Feature-Article Standen,-E.-A

Author: Standen,-E.-AStanden,-E.-A Title: “Studies in the history of tapestry Renaissance and Mannerism.” Journal: Apollo (London, England) Crucial info: number 114, July 1981, p

Same question as before; Do we own Apollo?

Once again, you could look it up in the catalog…

Or, let the magical software do it for you!

You see, we have a software called “SFX”

Which sits between whatever database you’re using and the catalog

It searches our catalog to see if the book or article you’re looking at is in the Five College system

If you click here

(UM Links is UMass’s SFX tab; each of the Four Colleges has its own colored tab)

This is the screen you get….

Since the first link is for the Five College catalog

The software has found it in our system, Go ahead and click…

It brings up our catalog record

ISSN = International Standard Serial Number Like ISBN= International Standard Book Number, it’s just a way to identify journals or books.

So it looks like we have Apollo, both in print and online…

Let’s go online first!

Start clicking…

Just one more screen…

Here we are!!

Uh oh…bad news

If you look carefully, you see that it’s available in “e-form” only from 2003 on…

The article we wanted was published in 1981 TI: Studies in the history of tapestry Renaissance and MannerismAU: Standen,-E.-ASO: Apollo (London, England) ns 114 July p. 20-8DE: Raphael, DT: Feature-Article Standen,-E.-A

This happens a lot; many journals have only been digitized for short periods

Still, remember that we do have the journal you need in print

And you can get it the “old” way…

Let’s switch databases & topics…

The leading index in world history is Historical Abstracts

Here’s its search screen

Let’s search for Leonardi da Vinci

Quite a few hits!

This search provides us with lots of good examples of different ways of accessing articles

Number 2, for example, has an html link to a full- text article

One click brings up the full text

You can print, download, or the text

You can even export it to a bibliographic management software

Like RefWorks, which the library provides free to all faculty, students, & staff

(Click here to set up an account)

Let’s go back and look at, say, number 5

OK, you’ve read the abstract, so go back out to the previous screen…

And click on the SFX link

Looks like the article we want to see is available full-text

Click Go

You’re taken right to the article. You can look at it in PDF format or in HTML

Voila!

Let’s do just one more…

Let’s say, that for some reason, you want to read this article (in Italian)

Again, you would click on the SFX link

This time, the software tells you we DON’T own the journal

Because the first link that appears is for Interlibrary loan…

In which case you’d use that library service, known as ILL, to get the article

For a full explanation of how to use ILL, go back to the libguide home page

And click here

This has been a quick orientation to finding articles. There are lots of variables…

We access databases from all sorts of vendors, with different websites and search screens

Sometimes the SFX software will take you right to the article….

Other times it will take you to the journal’s list of issues…

Which you must then open…

To get to the table of contents and then the full text.

Yes, it can be complicated and sometimes frustrating

But, remember…

You can always use the catalog to double-check a journal’s availability & format

Or, when in doubt….

ASK A LIBRARIAN!!!

Written by Peter Stern