November 2008

Where's the full article?

You have only a citation or abstract (article summary) and need the full journal article; what do you do? You found the article in a library database or somewhere else, but the full article wasn't linked. To understand what to do, let's imagine that you want to find the following item.

Title: Animated Listening Maps.
Author: Kassner, Kirk
Source: General Music Today; Spring2007, Vol. 20 Issue 3, p35-39, 6p, 1 chart

1. First, identify the title of the magazine or journal in which the article appears. The title of the journal is General Music Today.

2. Then go to the "Journal Finder," a link in the middle of the Library's home page, and click again on "Journal Finder" to get to its search screen.

3. Select what type of search to do -- "title begins with" or "title contains all words." Then enter the journal title in the search box.

4. You will get search results if the journal is available in a library database or in print in the library.
A search for General Music Today produces this result, showing the databases in which it can be found and for what publication years:

General music today
from 04/01/1999 to 04/01/2002 in ProQuest Education Journals
from 09/01/2003 to present in Academic Search Premier and MasterFILE Premier
from 01/01/2004 to 09/22/2007 in InfoTrac Student Edition
from 01/01/2006 to 09/22/2007 in InfoTrac Junior Edition

5. Pay attention to dates. Although Proquest Education Journals includes this journal, full articles are only available from 1999 to 2002 in that database. The article that is needed was published in Spring 2007, so, according to the results, the article should be available in Academic Search Premier.

6. In Journal Finder, the underlined database names will be live links. To get the journal, click on the link to the database "Academic Search Premier" in Journal Finder, and it will take you to the journal issues or to a search screen where you can search within the journal title for the article.

• If you are seeing a journal screen where journal issues are browseable, look for the links to years and click on 2007. According to the citation for the article, you need to find Volume 20, issue 3. Once you've selected that issue, browse for the article title "Animated Listening Maps."

• If you are seeing a search screen, select keywords from the title of the article and search. For our example article, search for: animated listening maps

7. If one of the results of the search in Journal Finder for General Music Today (in step 4 above) had been "Dakota State University's print holdings," you wouldn't click on that link. That statement means that the journal is in print format in the Library, so distance students would ask us to send a copy to them and on-campus students would go to the library to make a copy.

9. If your search for a journal title in Journal Finder produces 0 results, then the Library does not have the journal. In that case, use the "Interlibrary Loan" link on the Library's home page to request that we get the article for you from another library.

If you have any trouble in following this process -- do not hesitate to ask for help! Use the "Ask a Librarian" link on the Library's homepage or stop in the library to get help. We're happy to answer questions and definitely don't want you to get frustrated when you can't find the articles you need.

Library Hours

Find out when the Library is open by using the "Hours" link in the left navigation bar on the Library's homepage. Holiday exceptions to the regular hours are listed below the regular hours. For example, our hours change because of Assessment Day and Veteran's Day.

• Saturday-Sunday Nov 8-9: CLOSED
• Monday(Assess.Day) Nov 10: 8am-5pm
• Tuesday(Veteran's Day) Nov 11: 6pm-10pm