Never pay out-of-pocket for an article again! Use Interlibrary Loan (ILL) to request books and articles that the ISU Library does not own. (And if we do own a book you want but it's checked out, you can request that too! We'll get it for you from another library!)
We'll get it for you from another library, and there's no fee for ISU students.
Turnaround time? 24 hours/1 business day for article or chapter PDFs, around 1 week for a book.
Pro tip 1: Need just one chapter of a book for a class? Request a PDF through ILL and avoid having to buy the entire book!
Pro tip 2: Need chapters or articles from our print collections? Request them through ILL & we'll send you a PDF copy!
As you complete your dissertation or thesis, it will automatically be added to the Digital Repository.
In addition, you can begin promoting your ISU scholarly outcomes right now by submitting your other publications and presentations to the DR. Check it out!
Quick Search is... an easy to use tool for quickly gathering information & seeing what's available (books, journal articles, more) from a variety of databases & subject indexes on your topic. It can be a useful & good way to get started. Quick Search is also our "library catalog" - search it whenever you need to know what we own locally.
Quick Search is not... the only place to look for journal articles in all subjects, nor the only source to use when comprehensive research results are needed. Coverage for research articles varies quite widely by discipline, ranging from excellent to spotty.
When your article search needs to be comprehensive, visit our Articles & Databases list to search research indexes relevant to your subject area(s).
Want to find out if your dissertation or thesis topic is fresh or stale? Or check your advisor's previous students' work? You'll definitely want to search this database! You can easily search Dissertations & Theses Global by author, topic / full text keywords, subject area, by advisor, institution, your discipline or department, by language, and much more. It covers 1606 to the present! Includes full-text for most dissertations 1997-present and some older years as well. Borrow (or purchase) older dissertations we don't own through our Interlibrary Loan.
Their new Citation Connections search allows you to find dissertations whose references have been harvested to produce additional "Foundational Research" recommendations.
WorldCat is...a way to find books owned by other libraries. The free web version of WorldCat includes settings that allow you to discover which US libraries nearest to you (wherever you happen to be located) own the book you want. You can also search WorldCat via the ISU Library's subscription version, which allows more advanced search features to refine your results.
WorldCat is not... inclusive of all library catalogs worldwide, though you will find selected libraries from across the world are included. Outside the US, national libraries, archives, and libraries of major universities tend to be well represented. In the US, research libraries, public libraries of all sizes, special libraries, and national and archival libraries are very well represented.
Google Scholar is... an easy tool to search that quickly finds citations (and often full-text) to online scholarly articles, books, and web resources with a minimum of fuss. Advanced Search options can be very useful (click on Menu lines in top left corner). If accessing from off-campus, log into your Google account and change your settings for your library to be Iowa State University (pick the View It option) for seamless linking between Google Scholar results and items owned by our Library. Google Scholar also includes useful citation counts for some materials, helping you gauge an item's potential impact on your research field.
Google Scholar is not... the best choice for all subjects nor as flexible as subject-focused research indexes. Also not the only source to use when comprehensive research results are needed. Bear in mind it searches online materials only, much of which (books, for example) may not be full-text online.
Web of Science is... the interface name for a set of databases which includes CAB Abstracts (an agricultural database) and a collection of citation indexes. There are three main citation databases you can search individually (Science Citation Index; Social Sciences Citation Index; Arts & Humanities Citation Index) or altogether as Core Collection.
The citation indexes allow you to search for authors or articles that are heavily cited, an important way to identify key works.
Web of Science is not... just "science." As described above, it covers the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.
Scopus is a direct competitor to Web of Science. In recent years, Web of Science has expanded the number of journals it covers beyond just the "core" journals in each discipline. Scopus has similar features to Web of Science and they now cover about the same number of journals. The main difference is in the look and function of these 2 databases.
The library's collections and services are available to all ISU students, faculty, and staff and Parks Library is open to the public.
