I love magazines. However, I get very frustrated when I hear about a great article that’s not online and not in a magazine I subscribe to. The selection of magazines in Charlottesville is pretty good, but not fantastic; I don’t often want to buy a magazine just for a single article; sometimes the article I want is in a back issue. What to do, what to do?
JMRL to the rescue! Not every time, but often enough, I can find the article I’m looking for in one of their online databases.
(This tip works for premium content in the New York Times, too — why pay to read David Brook’s or Maureen Dowd’s blitherings? They should be paying me!)
You probably know how it works, but just in case: Go to the catalog. Click on Databases. Choose the appropriate database, enter your JMRL patron number, and follow the search directions.
Here’s how a database helped me today: I was reading an article in the March 2007 The Writer about finding experts for interviews. I wanted to save a copy of the article, because, thrifty me, I had checked the issue out of the library. I went to their website, writermag.com, hoping that the article would be online. It isn’t. Plus, their articles are available only to subscribers anyway. Dirty dogs!
Too lazy to walk upstairs and scan the article, too cheap to pay for a photocopy, I turned to the JMRL online databases. On my first search attempt, I had a full text copy of the article on my screen, complete with correct citation. Right-click, send to OneNote (an all-purpose information database tool), and the article I so coveted is mine.
I said I was obsessive. Don’t get me started on the good ol’ days when I could get LexisNexis free at work….
Filed under: charlottesville, libraries, reference
