The University of Pennsylvania has 17 different libraries! It is vitally important to learn early on how to find things in the system and tap into all the additional resources Penn can connect you with. I had to do my first literature review this week for one of my classes. In the past, I remember hating research projects because I was never able to find the articles that I needed. I would also find these awesome abstracts online but then not be able to access the full text. I have found that NOT to be the case here at Penn. On top of the millions of books and journals Penn physically owns in their libraries the university also has accounts for thousands of online journals. These can be searched through a wide range of databases on the university's website.
Borrow Direct: This is a partnership that Penn has with several other university libraries. If there is a book that you want and Penn does not have it or their copy has already been checked out you can request the book to be sent here from one of these other libraries. I realized, a little too late unfortunately, that this is a great option for textbooks. If you have a certain book to read for a class rather than buying it you can borrow from one of these partner libraries for a few weeks. It's a great way to save a little money!
Citation management: Another excellent tool I found through the Penn libraries page is different sites which store all your references/articles in one place online. So each time you are searching for articles and you find one you like you can export and save the link in one of these citation management sites and come back to it later. This sure beats having to write it down or email the link to yourself or download everything to your computer.
The Penn libraries also have librarians dedicated to each school at Penn and they will help you find research on a certain topic if you need them.
Overall I have to give the University of Pennsylvania Libraries a 10!
No comments:
Post a Comment