Searching for Articles

A big part of what we do is link students and faculty with the articles they need for their research, whether in academic or peer-reviewed journals or magazines and newspapers.

Of course, as information technology and the Web have evolved, the number of journals in electronic format has exploded (I'm not sure exactly how many the Library provides but it's certainly 10,000+).

So we are constantly exploring better ways to organize and provide access to these important sources of the best, most current information, innovation and ideas. We also have to consider the fact that our users (from grad students and faculty to kids right out of high school) have varying degrees of experience and expertise when it comes to doing academic research.

With all of this in mind, we've been working behind the scenes to improve the options you have for getting your hands on the articles you want. On our homepage, this is what you'll see as of next week:
  1. Instead of separate boxes for finding books and finding articles, there will be one convenient, integrated search box for both. The "Find books (and more)" search box will retrieve both books and articles (and A/V and other materials as well). Once you enter your search terms in the box and get your results, on the left you'll see check boxes for selecting either books or articles.
  2. Access to the Databases A-Z list will not change. So you can still go directly to the database of your choice. And we'll continue to provide quick links to a few of our more popular ones (ABI, JSTOR, etc.) on the homepage as well.
We'll be making more improvements to the homepage in the coming weeks. In the meantime, we hope you'll explore these options and that they work well for you.

If you have any comments or questions, just let me know at ron.houlihan@smu.ca or 420-5198.

p.s. Yesterday afternoon and through the night, the Ebsco databases (Academic Search Premier, PsychInfo, Women's Studies International and others) were unavailable due to technical problems at Ebsco's offices. This caused a lot of inconvenience to those of you who rely on them so we apologize for that. They're back to normal today.

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