March 15, 2004

Find It -- the University Libraries Linking Service

Users of many of the University Libraries’ bibliographic citation indexes, including the OVID databases, PubMed, VetCD, and Web of Science, are now able to use a new article access service implemented by the Libraries. Find It, the University Libraries Linking Service, allows library users to quickly link from a bibliographic citation in an index to a pop-up menu of options for accessing that article or document. Depending on the article, access options may include:

  • a direct link to the electronic full text document (or in some cases to a journal's homepage)

  • a link to the Libraries' print and electronic holdings in MNCAT, our catalog

  • in the absence of Libraries' holdings, the option to request the article through Interlibrary Loan. When you log in, the ILL form will be pre-populated with your personal information and with the citation information, meaning you won’t have to type in that info yourself!

Library users will be able to use this new service whenever they see the find it standard button button, or a similar text link, in a bibliographic index citation. The appearance of the button will vary somewhat, according to the space allowed by different database providers. For example, the Find It button in PubMed appears as: finditbuttonpubmed.jpeg

Current PubMed users will note that this full text service is somewhat similar to the PubMed “University of Minnesota” full text buttons used previously. As our database grows, the new service will link to full text sources not currently available through the old buttons. Find It additionally allows quick access to the U of M’s interlibrary loan service, for items not available locally.

As with the previous full text linking service, the Find It button will only appear in PubMed if users enter the database through a U of M Libraries' web page, such as the Bio-Medical Library home page. Users can also bookmark and use this direct link: http://www.lib.umn.edu/cgi-bin/pubm.cgi

The Libraries will implement Find It in many of our bibliographic indexes and other resources over the next several months, so continue to watch for follow-up announcements!

Posted by biomednews at March 15, 2004 11:38 AM