How to find resources by format

Looking for an item in a specific format to help you with your research? Start here! This guide was created to help researchers find items by format including articles, maps, e-books, media, and more. 

Use the guide navigation menu on the left to get help finding materials you need. 

You can also search a database by subject (like Business or Psychology). If you are doing research for one of your courses, try our Course Guides (like CHEM 1015 or COMM 1101).

Scholarly

The resource was written by an expert for an audience of other experts, researchers, or students.

Peer Review

Before it can be published, a peer reviewed article has been carefully evaluated by a board of other scholars in the same field of study as the author. This is usually an anonymized review that looks at methodology, conclusions, if the experiment is repeatable, similar studies, and more.

Primary Source

Immediate, first-hand accounts of a topic, from people who had a direct connection with it.

Secondary Source

Interpretations and evaluations of primary sources, often a commentary on and discussion of evidence. Secondary sources use primary sources, as well as books, articles, etc., as their source.

Meta-analysis

A quantitative, formal study design used to systematically assess the results of previous research to make conclusions about that body of research.

Methodology

Usually this is towards the beginning of the article or book and describes the specific procedures or techniques used to identify, select, process, and analyze information about a topic. In a research paper, the methodology section allows the reader to critically evaluate a study's overall validity and reliability.

Literature Review

A survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question. Like the methodology, this is usually towards the beginning of a source to provide context in a particular field.

Most online journals and databases require subscriptions (which the U of M Libraries pay for) to get access.

On campus

If you are on campus, access can be relatively seamless since authentication is usually established by IP address (e.g. if you have a U of M IP address, the publisher recognizes it and lets you in).

Off campus

If you are off campus, then you need to be routed through the Libraries' "proxy server." One way to do this is to precede the URL you want with the prefix 

http://login.ezproxy.lib.umn.edu/login?url=

For example, the URL 

http://www.jstor.org/stable/25599631 

can be given the prefix and reentered as: 

https://login.ezproxy.lib.umn.edu/login?url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/25599631

This will provide off-campus users with the same access as they would have if on-campus.

Proxy Bookmarklet

However, many people like to just search for a journal using Google and go directly there. To get your browser to route you through the library proxy server, you can simply try the following:

Drag this button up to your bookmarks toolbar in your browser: (or right-click to save it to your favorites toolbar)

Reload via U of M Libs

Now, when you're on a web page that you'd like to redirect through the Libraries' proxy server, clicking this button will automatically reload the web page.

Both the bookmarklet and the URL should work whether the user is on-campus or off. The scripts at the library will recognize if you're on-campus and if so, will send you directly to the resource. If you are off campus, the library's script sends you through the proxy server instead. This can be useful for bookmarking URL's on a laptop you may use both on and off campus, or if you want to share an article with a colleague or student.

Some sites, like JSTOR, may require you to locate a 'Stable URL' on the page. If you click on this link after applying the bookmarklet, you will be redirected to the full article, rather than a sample page.

While this will work for the vast majority of e-journals and e-books, there are a few resources that require a more intricate set-up to enable proxy access. Let us know if you have quesitonsor  any difficulties with this!

Watch a short video on the proxy bookmarklet! 

Mobile users

Installing bookmarklets in mobile browsers is tricky, and support on various browsers and platforms is subject to frequent change. If you'd like to try using this bookmarklet on your mobile device, your best bet is probably to bookmark this page, then edit the bookmark, pasting the following code in place of the bookmark's URL

javascript:void(location.href='https://login.ezproxy.lib.umn.edu/login?url='+location.href)