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Hello. This is a tutorial designed to help you locate full text articles online.
We're going to be using as an example a database called Communication & Mass Media Complete.
It's just one of many databases that the CMU Libraries has,
but it's fairly representative of the type of search interface you're going to encounter.
So here we are within this database.
Let's go ahead and put our search topic right up in that first line.
We're looking for articles on multicultural communication.
There is a way to limit our search results to full text articles only.
If you look down below this green "Limit your results" line, you have a little box that says "Full text."
If you put a check mark in that box,
everything that you bring back in your search results is going to offer you the full text of the article.
So it's not going to bring back anything that doesn't allow you access to the full text.
The one thing I will say is that you will probably be limiting your results
to not all of the potential articles you could find,
because in databases, not everything is available in full text.
So you're probably going to get a smaller result set,
but if you're looking only for full text that is one way to limit it.
I'm going to go ahead and click that off right now,
and we're just going to do the search
and bring back both full text and non-full text items.
Here's our results here.
If you look at the first two,
you've got this little link to the PDF full text right there.
You would be able to click on that, open up that article.
Look at number three here. There is no link.
There is a burgundy box that says "Find it!" though.
When you click on that, what that's going to do
is explore all of the other databases that CMU owns
and tell you whether this particular article appears in full text in any other database.
So let's go ahead and click on that.
And here we go, at the top it says "Available online."
It is available in the database called SAGE Premier 2011.
What we need to do now is click on this "go" button,
and that will take us to that particular database.
Here it is here. It gives us our our article,
it gives us all the information, it gives us a little abstract.
If you look over to the right,
here's your full text PDF, if you just click on that
you'd be able to see that actual article itself.
So when you use Find it!,
Find it! again is a way to search all of our databases simultaneously
to find that full text if it's not available in the database you happen to be searching at that moment.
When you use it, this top section is going to tell you
all of the various places where that article is available, other databases,
and you just click on that "go."
Occasionally, you may look up something and it says not available online.
What you want to do here,
is go to this link down here that says "Request this item from another library."
You can request that our Documents on Demand service
obtain this article for you from another library.
If you click on this "go" button the login form for
it's a system called ILLiad which is the document delivery form
that our Documents on Demand office uses that will open.
You'll put in your login information and that article will be submitted to them.
Typically, Documents on Demand can get articles from other libraries
within twenty-four to forty-eight hours.
They have a a very quick turnaround time.
So it won't help you obviously if you're looking for for the full text right then,
but I do want to point out the fact that just because the CMU Libaries
doesn't have a particular article, it doesn't mean that it's not available to you.
So again, the three ways you can find that full text you can find it right in that
database you're searching just click on that link to the PDF, or you can hit
that maroon "Find it!" button, it'll take you to this screen we're looking at here,
and it will tell you which other databases have that article.
Just click on that "go" button and you go off to 'em, and if that still doesn't work,
you can always request if from the library's Documents on Demand office.
They will search other libraries, obtain the full text copy of it for you, and make sure you get it that way.
If you have any other questions, be sure to ask a librarian.