When searching an electronic database, you will often find a mix of full-text articles and citations or abstracts (references to where an article can be found, or brief descriptions of them).
Below is a page of search results from the InfoTrac Expanded Academic ASAP database. Notice how the first two results (followed by the notes "Text" or "Text with Graphics") are available online in the database, while the third article is not. It is only available in the database in abstract form -- which is not the full article.
Most databases will, like InfoTrac Expanded Academic ASAP, allow you to see if an article not full-text in that database is full-text in another database. [Remember that each database is different, and no one database has all articles!] Simply click on the link to "Search for Full-Text" after the reference to the article.
Often, this will link you to options for getting the full-text of the article online in another database. Sometimes the article will be available in multiple databases, as in the example below, where the article can be found full-text in both Wilson Select Plus and InfoTrac Expanded Academic ASAP. Also, you may be linked directly to the article itself, or to a journal containing the article. Whenever possible, follow a link to the article first, then a link to the journal (which will make you find the volume and date with your article online), and then to the resource (which would make you search another database for your article).
At other times, you will be told "Sorry, no holdings were found for this journal." What this means is that there is no full-text, online version of this article available through NMSU Library. You will, however, be given the option to search the library's catalog for print holdings of the journal and, if no print holdings are found, to request an Interlibrary Loan copy of that article.
Self-Test
A Question:
Olivia got the following message when she clicked on the link to Search for Full-Text from an article citation in a database. What should she do next? Keep searching for it online in other databases, look for a print copy in the library, or request a copy of the article via Interlibrary Loan?
Page created by: Kate Manuel.
Last update: Tuesday, December 07, 2004
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