Find Your Materials - Prep

Introduction | Prep | Presentation | Activity

Equip yourself to handle obscure references (15 minutes)

Explore the ALL ABOUT: Finding Your Materials page to learn how to locate "known items" across the research landscape. Especially when just popping the words into the nearest search box doesn't seem to help!

A “known item” is a specific citation that you are trying to find access to.

Review your library’s access services (10 minutes)

If you want to track down a citation, you will almost always begin with your library’s catalog. (UK is InfoKat Discovery)

As the center of our research ecosystem, it's the most comprehensive "list" of the materials you can have immediate access to.

Your library may offer more services than you are aware of in addition to circulating collections and Interlibrary Loan Links to an external site. (ILL). Many libraries scan materials. Your library may also belong to a consortium that gives you preferential access to the other libraries in the system.

Explore your library’s website for library services, borrowing, access, document delivery, and other similar language.

Explore UK's Where Do I Start Links to an external site. guide.

Tips and tricks (10 minutes)

Sometimes these access services behave differently in different situations. We will be using InfoKat Discovery as an example, but this will likely apply to your library and set of services.

Multiple databases for the same thing (ex: New York Times Links to an external site.)

Libraries license access from many different vendors and platforms.

Sometimes there’s redundant access across multiple platforms. Other times access is split, with some years on one platform and some years on another. These platforms do not connect to each other: you need to go back to the library catalog to switch from one platform to another.

Search for the journal if you can’t find the article

If you can't find an article, try searching for the journal title instead.

Once you figure out where to access the journal, you can navigate to the specific year and issue that contains the article.

The same applies to any work contained within a larger one: if you can’t find the chapter, search for the book title instead.

Serials/periodicals (including monograph series)

A multiyear run of a series may be split across multiple catalog records.

This happens if the title or frequency changes. Clues may be found in the catalog record for any part of the series:

“Related titles”
“Continues”
“Continued by”
“Published as”

Knowledge check (10 minutes)

Match the material type to the citation

Use clues from the citations to determine what type of material they are.

Nicosia, N. (1994). Act 7. (silver gelatin)
Does this citation describe an article or an image?

Hint: There is no publisher, so this may not be a book or article. Silver gelatin is a popular method of printing photography.

Answer: This citation is for an image.
Bangladesh, Commercial Vegetable and Polyculture Fish Production -- Their Impacts on Income, Household Resource Allocation, and Nutrition, 1996-1997. International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), 2015.
Does this citation describe a dataset or a conference proceeding?

Hint: This was produced by a research institute. The citation does not include the name for an event such as a conference or symposium.

Answer: This citation is for a dataset.
Kurkovsky, A. (2018). Emerging Simulation Challenge: An Approach to Simulate of Sustainable Development of Higher Education Institutions. 2018 IEEE/ACM 22nd International Symposium on Distributed Simulation and Real Time Applications (DS-RT), 1-2.
Does this citation describe a journal or a conference proceeding?

Hint: The title of the larger publication provides a year, hosting organization, and an event name.

Answer: This citation is for a conference proceeding.