If you are searching out on the open web, Nomad is a fantastic tool for locating the full-text of items in our library. Nomad is an extension you can add to your browser. To add it to your browser, follow these links for the browser of your choice. After you "get" the extension, you'll need to select Southwest Southwest Minnesota State University from the drop down menu under Select Organization. After installation, this is what the icon looks like in the browser bar and/or on the web.
After you've installed it, you can see it in action by doing a Wikipedia search for Educational Technology. When you scroll down and look at the References (because we don't really cite from Wikipedia, but rather use it as a jumping off point for our research), you'll see several references that have a link with the green teardrop icon in them. Those links will lead you back to full-text sources available through the McFarland Library. You will also see this functionality at work in Google Scholar searches with a graphic like this showing up in the lower left hand corner when the article can be retrieved through SMSU.
We recognize students are often more comfortable searching on the web vs. using the databases. While that is an option, as a researcher, you need to know that you are not getting a complete view of resources available to you when you only search the open web. That's because of paywalls - we pay for access to the databases and that is where the bulk of academic literature is housed - and that can't be accessed through search tools such as Google.
However, Google Scholar is a search tool you can use to find academic articles. Scholar indexes scholarly, peer-reviewed articles, but note that many are not available full-text. We have a few steps in place to aid you with gaining access to full-text articles if you search in Google Scholar.
1) access Scholar through the library's A-Z Database list. That Scholar link is tied back to SMSU's McFarland Library; the general Google Scholar link isn't.
2) Use the LibKey Nomad extension. Adding the LibKey Nomad extension to your browser will link you back to full-text articles SMSU has access to in our databases. .
So knowing that the article might be full-text in the database or you could interlibrary loan a copy, you'd never purchase an article, right?
Zotero is an open source research management software.
It is used to organize your research and assist in citation development. You may want to utilize it to keep track of the resources you find.
Interested in learning more? The Zotero Research Guide has details and video demonstrations.
And, as always, please ask if you have questions!