Library Tutorial - Finding Full Text - Introduction

Sometimes a database will have the full-text of an article, but most databases only provide citations. The citation is similar to the information you provide in a bibliography at the end of a paper; it provides enough details to allow someone to go and find the actual article or book.

Citations have different information depending on the type of item:

• Articles usually have specific page numbers and a month and year of publication (May 1999 rather than just 1999).
• Books usually have a place, year, and company of publication.
• Book chapters usually have page numbers in addition to the book publication information.
• Dissertations usually mention Dissertation Abstracts somewhere in the citation, or give the name of a university without mentioning a specific publisher.

Databases arrange the citation in different formats, as you will see in the following examples.   No matter what format is used, however, the citation always gives enough details to find the text.  

This section of the Library Tutorial teaches you how to interpret different types of citations and how to see if McConnell Library has the item.

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