Library searches

A student may ask us:

I did a Google search for my thesis or academic research project, and I found an article I need to read. But the website says it costs a lot of money to read the article. What can I do?

Our reply may be:

Since an open search was done on Google, the publisher of the article does not know that you are a student at a university which subscribes to research databases. That it why it is always a good idea to start searches at the Thammasat University Library’s own search engines.

The student may wonder:

How can I find that same article again on the TU Library website?

We may answer:

Note down the title of the article carefully and what publication it appeared in. Then put that information into the TU Library search function.

The student may add:

Would it be okay to search for the article on JSTOR or EbscoHost?

We can state:

Yes, or any research database that the TU Library subscribes to. Then if a result comes up, it should usually be available to students, ajarns, staff, and other TU affiliated researchers without further charge.

If the student is still concerned about finding the article in question, we may be asked:

What happens if the article was printed in a book that is not in the TU Library collection and is not offered free on the research databases that the TU Library subscribes to?

We may say:

In that case, it may be possible to get the article and the book it appears in through interlibrary loan service (ILL).

There are other ways to search for published articles online without cost. Google Scholar is a search engine that produces links to academic content, including free versions of articles. If we do an open Google web search for material, it is best to add after the title of the article, the filter “filetype:pdf”.

This will turn up PDFs of the article that have been posted online. In some cases, it can be useful to look up texts in Google Books, although that search engine only offers limited previews of books. Other search services include Semantic Scholar, designed as a smart search service for journal articles to highlight the most important papers and identify the connections between them. Microsoft Academic is a free public web search engine for academic publications and literature, developed by Microsoft Research. Students in the TU Faculty of Economics may be familiar with EconBiz, an academic search portal for journals, working papers, and conferences in business studies and economics. TU students in the Faculty of Health Sciences may also be familiar with the

Virtual Health Library, provided by the World Health Organization (WHO) to share access to scientific knowledge on health.

(all images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)