Find Full Text eBooks and Journal Articles Fast

Have a paper due tomorrow? Too tired to get up and go over to the library? There is a solution. See that PC over there in the corner of your dorm room? Did you know you could use that thing to do your research? No, I'm not talking about the Internet. I'm talking books and journals that you have exclusive access to simply because you go to WPI.

The Gordon Library subscribes to thousands of full-text magazines, journals, and newspapers online, as well as over 12,000 full text eBooks. How do you access them? I'm glad you asked.

Let's start with the eBooks. Go to the Gordon Library home page, located at http://www.wpi.edu/+library. You can either search the library catalog (the first link on the Main Menu) by keyword or subject heading and see if any eBooks come up, or you can search netLibrary.

netLibrary is accessible from the "Databases and Indexes" page by choosing the letter "N" under "Browse By Database Title" and then choosing netLibrary from the list. netLibrary offers access to 6,500 full text book titles along with 4,000 public domain titles. Just perform a quick search to find the books you need. You'll have to create an account to check a book out if you want to use it for more than the 15 minute preview time. You can even download the eBook onto your PC for easier viewing.

Now that you've got a book or two, it's time to get some articles. If you know a journal title you'd like to search, click on the "Electronic Journals" link from the Main Menu. You can find the journal you're looking for by title or by subject. There are also a variety of full-text journal databases, noted with a "Y" under the full text column beside the database's name. One that comes in handy for a variety of topics is Infotrac OneFile. Accessible from the "Databases and Indexes" link, you can search a wide variety of magazines, journals and newspapers back to 1980 by simply entering a few keywords and checking off the box limiting your search to "articles with text."

If it's newspapers you're looking for, you have access to ten years worth of full text newspapers by using the LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe database. And that's not all. LEXIS-NEXIS also includes full text medical journals, the full text of Federal and State Case law and law journals, and full text company and financial news. Simply choose a category and subcategory for your research and go to town.

Want to know more? Attend one of the three short courses offered by the library during what we are affectionately calling "Full Text Frenzy Week." We'll show you how to find full text articles, books or newspaper articles quickly, so you can do all your research from the comfort of your dorm room. To register for a short course, click on the name of the course you'd like to attend from the Gordon Library home page, and then click on the link under the course description to "Register for the course."