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PolyU Library

Library Online Tutorial for SEHS3279

About Module 4

In this module, you will learn to:

  • Get full text of books and articles from PolyU Library

Get Full-text through Library

In most cases, the research materials you found online are not available for free. You might end up at a page asking you to pay for 30 USD to view the full text of just one article. This module shows you the steps of how to get full-text through the Library. As you may know, Library has subscribed hundreds of databases that contain millions of books, journals and other research materials. As a student, you can access all of them for free. 

Jump to specific part based on your needs:

Find Books

Find Articles & Journals

Find Other Materials in Databases
  • OneSearch
  • OneSearch
  • Google Scholar
  • Databases
  • Find Statistics & Data
  • Find Theses & Dissertations

Find Books

Find Books

The quickest way to find the full-text of books is through a direct search in OneSearch. You may search by Keywords, Title of the Book, Call Number, or an ISBN number. Follow the steps below:

  1. Go to OneSearch. Type in your keywords or title of the book and hit the search button.
  2. Limit results to "Books" under Resource Type on the right panel of the page. You may refine your results to "Full Text Online" so that only E-Books will be shown in the result list. "Physical items" will bring you print books only. Click on the book title to see more information about the book. 
  3. Sign in with your NetID and NetPassword.
  4. For e-books, click the full text option below to get access to the book. Note that some e-book platforms allow you to download the whole book in a PDF file, while some would only allow to read online or download a portion of the book everyday due to copyright restrictions. For print books, click on Location to see at which floor the book is located and find the book from the bookshelf by its Call Number. Check it out at Service Counter at P/F.

Find Articles & Journals

Find Articles

There are couple of ways to help you find articles: OneSearch, Google Scholar, or databases. Below shows the steps of finding an article in OneSearch. Refer to the other tabs to see how to access articles from Google Scholar and databases.

  1. Go to OneSearch. Type in your keywords or title of the article and hit the search button.
  2. Limit results to "Articles" under Resource Type on the right panel of the page. You may also refine results by publication year, full-text availability, etc. 
  3. Sign in with your NetID and NetPassword.
  4. Click the full text option below to view the article.

Find E-Journals

Most of our journals are in e-format. Below is a quick way to help you find a journal and browse its articles.

  1. Go to OneSearch. Click Journal A-Z.
  2. Type in the title of the journal and hit the search button. 
  3. Click on the journal title to access the journal. 

Find Articles

To get the full text of articles in Google Scholar, we suggest that you access Google Scholar via the Library homepage, especially when you are off campus. By doing this you will be able to directly access the full text of the articles through Library. Follow the steps below:

  1. Go to OneSearch. Switch to "Articles" and then click on Google Scholar@PolyU. Sign in with your NetID and NetPassword.
  2. Conduct a search in Google Scholar. The article within our collection will be provided with the "PolyU eLinks" option. Click to get the full text PDF for free.

 

Find Related Articles

When you found a very relevant article, you may click on "Cited by XX" or "Related articles" to find more similar articles. "Cited by XX" will bring you a list of citing articles - the articles that referenced the article you found. These articles were published after the article you found, and will show you more recent development on the similar topic.

Google Scholar setting - Link with PolyU Library

You may also change the setting in your Google Scholar to link it up with Library subscribed databases. This is identical to Google Scholar@PolyU.

Find Articles

As mentioned in Module 2, databases usually contain specialized materials. To look for journal articles, you may search in an article database. Below is an example of searching articles in one of the article databases:

  1. Access Web of Science through Library. You may do a search under "Databases" on Library homepage.
  2. Click Online Access to get in. Sign in with your NetID and NetPassword. 
  3. Search by keywords, or title of the article (if known). You may use "Add row" and build a more sophisticated search statement. The search techniques mentioned in Module 3 can also be applied here. "Search tips" will show you more tips in searching in Web of Science. 
  4. After building your search statement, click Search to proceed.
  5. Results will be shown based on your search query. Click into one article that you find relevent. 
    You may refine results by publication year, subject categories, etc. from the left-side menu bar. You may also sort results by publication date, Times Cited, etc. from the top.
  6. Click PolyU eLinks will direct you to the full text options through Library. 


Find Related Articles

When you found a very relevant article, how do you quickly find related articles based on this one? Follow the tips below.

  1. Go to the citation network on the right side panel.
    Click on "Times Cited" number will bring you a list of citing articles - the articles that referenced (or cited) the article you found. These articles were published after the article you found, and will show you more recent development on the similar topic.
    Click on "Cited Reference" number will bring you a list of articles shown in the reference list of the article you found. These articles were published before the article you found. 

 

Find Other Materials in Databases

Here are a few more examples to help you get access to other types of materials, e.g. statistics, and theses & dissertations. 

Statistics & Data, Theses & Dissertations

  1. Go to CEIC China Database through Library. Search a topic at the top bar.
  2. Choose the relevant datasets. Drag and drop to the dashboard on the right hand side. The datasets you choose will be presented in a graph. 
  3. You can then download the dataset as an image (PNG, JPG), PDF or in Excel (XLS).

Master and PhD theses are also good references when you start your capstone or final year project. The theses usually contain a chapter "Literature Review" where you can find many relevant literature on that topic. You can also learn how a thesis work is structured from these existing works.

  1. Go to PolyU Electronic Theses through Library. Type in a topic and hit the search button. 
  2. You may limit to theses by certain department, or degree. Click on any title in the result list and download the thesis in PDF.