Friday, September 30, 2011

E-Resources, or Where Have All the Databases Gone?

Looking for peer-reviewed, full-text articles from the world's leading journals and reference sources?  We've got them. Detailed instructions on care, troubleshooting and repair information for cars, listed by year, make and model?  That too. Scholarly, government and general-interest titles on global warming, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more? Ditto.  Thousands of legal forms, including legal reference books provided through Nolo, the nation's oldest and most-respected provider of legal information for consumers and small businesses? Yes, yes, & yes!  All this & more is available to you 24/7 via our website, with your valid library card & 4 digit PIN.


I get questions all the time to lead me to suggest our copious eResources & LibGuides. Many people don't know we have them. Other people remember finding them from a link called 'Databases' and wonder where they've gone. Well, as we expanded beyond collections of magazine and journal articles (stored in databases) to live one-on-one tutoring, language learning systems, practice exams for things like the GRE and LSAT, and streaming classical music...well, the term databases didn't fit anymore. After trying out a few other terms (including, we're afraid, online electronic resources - what a mouthful) we decided eResources was the best option, to match our other online collections: eBooks and eAudiobooks.


Once you are at the library website (you can find the URL on your card!), you want to look down the sidebar on the left for Research Assistance, which is followed by the "eResources" link.  It'll look like this:


If you click on "eResources", you'll come to this page:


The eResources page is kind of one-stop shopping.  It explains that generally, what we call eResources are collections and services paid for by the library and only available over the Internet. Examples include databases full of magazine articles, one-on-one live homework help, study guides and practice tests, dictionaries, business and financial information, and much more. All the eResources are split into handy, browsable categories.

Maybe you already know what you want, for example to access Morningstar® Investment Research Center or Newsbank, but just need to find the link.  You probably just need  to consult the A to Z eResource List, which you can find at the top of the Featured Guides list.  This guide contains a full list of our subscription eResources organized by name. Here's a sampling of what that guide looks like:



I hope this addresses questions you might have had regarding our eResources.  I encourage you to stop by the library website & explore!

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