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ENGL 3102: Academic Writing Intensive

Using Interlibrary Loan for Articles

 

In your research, you may come across citations for articles without immediate access to the full text of an article. When this happens:

  • First, use CLIO to confirm if we might have access to an article's full text. You can do this by searching via the article title in Articles+, or searching by the journal/periodical title in the catalog.
  • If nothing comes up, you can use Interlibrary Loan to request a scanned PDF of an article.
  • Make sure you have information on at least these four elements:
    • article title
    • journal (or newspaper, or magazine) title
    • year of publication
    • inclusive page numbers
  • Expect an email notification when your article request is available to download and read!

 

Strategies for Finding Articles

From a Topic/ Question/ Keywords

If you are looking for articles in conversation with a specific topic:

  • Try CLIO Articles for a really broad/ general search. 
  • Use a database (see below for many relevant examples) to hone in your search within a specific body of literature and/or specific area of publishing. 

From a Citation

If you are trying to locate a specific article starting from a citation (ideally, one with the article's title, author(s), place of publication and date of publication), there are a few different ways you might go about your search:

  • Use CLIO Articles Search to search for the article by title. If the library's subscriptions give access to the article in full text, you should see a link that will lead you to the article. 
  • If the CLIO Articles Search does not lead you to the article, try the CLIO Catalog Search to search for the library's holdings of the periodical in which the article is published. This search will show you both print and digital holdings of journals, magazines, and other serials in which articles are published. 
  • If neither of the above searches leads you to the article you are looking for, try requesting a digital scan of the article using Interlibrary Loan. Make sure that you indicate the title, author, and inclusive page numbers you'll need (Note: You can also request book chapter scans using ILL). 

If you are interested in tracing where an article (or book, or book chapter) has been cited, try searching for it in Google Scholar. You can click on the "cited by" link under the source listing to lead to citations for these citing sources.

 

Finding Articles: Broad-Scope and Multidisciplinary Databases

Finding Articles: Specialized Databases