The landscape for accessing articles and scholarly works has traditionally been controlled by the publishing industry. Large publishing bodies maintained the copyright to works that were published within any journals they produce. Libraries, including Gould Library, need to pay subscription fees to provide access to the materials for students and faculty to use both in the past and currently. Sometimes these fees are outrageously expensive and prohibit entire college and university populations from accessing resources produced by a publisher. 

Fortunately, the library and researcher landscape has changed over the past 20 years and it's easier to get access to resources. But it's also more complex. This is partly because of a movement called Open Access. Pressures from the researchers, funders as well as colleges and universities have made headway toward increased access to peer-reviewed and published research articles. After all, it's not like the researchers who author the works in the first place get compensated for their work by the publisher. 

This page will introduce how to think about accessing resources and tried and true methods for gaining access to journal articles as well as other materials. This page will focus on using Google Scholar to discover access to resources, using Catalyst and finally Interlibrary Loan. 

Google Scholar is a fantastic resource to have in your toolkit. It is not the end all be all of databases, and has many deficits when compared to a library database. However, Google Scholar is great at providing available access points to resources. 

How to:

1. Search a known article by the title, or other characteristic that will summon the work.

2. The links at right of the screen will be access points for the work. If a PDF is available on the web, it will be the first link you'll see. Click on the PDF link to get immediate access to the work. 

• Sometimes this link is not access to the article, and will only provide the publisher link to pay the publisher for access. 
• Please never pay for an article during your time at Carleton. Always seek access through the library! 

3. The Carleton Full Text button will guide you to the resource in Catalyst, if available.

When you run a search using Catalyst, the default will be to search within items to which we have immediate access. When you click "Include articles at other libraries" the results number increase and the results set will include items to which we do not have immediate access. 

This is important because it allows you to search within resources we can get via Interlibrary Loan. It also expands the scope of your search. Particularly when you are  conducting research for your comps project, you don't want to limit your search to just what is within the Carleton collections and subscriptions. 

Interlibrary Loan

Interlibrary Loan will automatically appear as the access option when Carleton does not have immediate access to a resource. Simply click a resource you are interested in, make sure you are signed in and scroll down to the "How to get it" section of the page. Click on the Interlibrary Loan request link. 

If you've never used Interlibrary Loan before, expect to be directed to a sign up page. This is easy and quick to do! Once you've signed up, you may need to go back to the Catalyst article page to again click the Interlibrary Loan Request button. This action will to pull all of the required metadata into the Interlibrary Loan form leaving minimal work for you.

• Register for Interlibrary Loan and read more about it here.

Turn around time is:

• ~ 2 weeks for physical books
• ~ 4 days for electronic articles (usually much quicker)