Accessing Online Library Materials
Think you need to be on campus to access library resources? Nope! You can access our online resources from anywhere in the world! The most important thing to know about accessing materials is how to log in. If you're logged in, you'll have full-text access to thousands of eBooks, tens of thousands of journals, and hundreds of thousands of articles! If you aren't, you're going to hit a lot of paywalls.
When you start a new search in @LL Search, you should be prompted with a big yellow bar on the results page that looks like this:
Click on that bar to log in each time you are prompted with it, even if you logged in just yesterday, or have kept the tab in your browser open. If you are having trouble accessing materials and you are not prompted with that bar, check out our troubleshooting tips. Clearing your cache is the most common solution to that problem. For low residency students, especially those with a big time zone difference, your "study time" may be 2:00 AM in Cambridge, so going through these troubleshooting steps may help you gain access when you need it the most, without having to wait for an email back!
Trial Databases & Limited-Time Resources
The following are resources available through Lesley for a limited time offer by vendors who are providing promotional access to support the transition to online learning in light of COVID-19. These are available on a temporary basis; please be sure to check the end dates for each as some differ. This page will be updated as new resources are added.
- Business Source Ultimate
- Business Source Ultimate is a thorough resource for business information, with over 3,500 active business journals, over 2,000 of them peer-reviewed, and over 74,000 Associated Press videos. This trial is available through June 30, 2020.
- Harvard Business Publishing Collection
- This trial is available through May 30, 2020.The Harvard Business Publishing Collection is a collection of over 600 eBooks from the Harvard Business Publishing Collection, including the complete catalog of Harvard Business Review eBooks.
- JSTOR Expanded Access
- JSTOR is offering access to over 30,000 eBooks from participating publishers. These are integrated into the library's existing JSTOR content; you can also browse by publisher on the announcement page. These additional eBooks are made available through June 30, 2020.
- Loeb Classical Library
- Loeb Classical Library is made available through June 30, 2020.
- Sage Knowledge
- This trial is available through June 28, 2020. SAGE Knowledge contains over 5,100 titles including SAGE eBook and eReference materials, in fields such as business, education, environmental sciences, media studies, politics, health & social care, psychology, and sociology.
- Sage Research Methods
- This trial is available through June 28, 2020. SAGE Research Methods contains 480+ streaming videos which cover every aspect of the research process, including qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research.
- Sage Video
- This trial is available through June 28, 2020. SAGE Video features a variety of video types including demonstrations, interviews, conferences, panel discussions. and tutorials across key social science disciplines including business & management, education, media studies, politics, psychology, and sociology.
Vendors Providing Temporary Free Access
In addition to the resources Lesley provides (not sure if we can provide access? Ask us!), many vendors are providing free or reduced price access to their materials in order to support the rapid transition to online learning. Note that many of these promotional offers provide access to some, but not all resources, and are ony applicable to certain titles. If you aren't sure if the material you want to assign is part of the offer, feel free to reach out!
- Cambridge University Press
- Free access to textbooks published in HTML format through May 2020; list here.
- Free e-book access to Press textbooks through VitalSource
- Internet Archive:
- The Internet Archive has created the National Emergency Library, suspending waitlists on the 1.4 million (and growing) books in its lending library.Users can borrow books without joining a waitlist; the Archive's library has a focus on materials published in the 20th century, most of which do mot have commercially available eBooks. See the release here for more information.
- EBSCO
- EBSCO is partnering with over 100 publishers to provide unlimited user access to already-purchased single-user and 3-user access eBoooks, and promotional pricing on new unlimited user access licenses. Want to know if the eBook we have was upgraded? Check the detailed record for "Concurrent User Level."
- Elsevier
- All ScienceDirect customers have free access to all Elsevier textbooks. See the list here. To access textbooks, make sure you're logged in through EZproxy by going through this ScienceDirect link, which you can also find on the A-Z list!
- JoVE Stem Education Video Library
- JoVE is offering free access to their STEM education video library, including JoVE Core, JoVE Science Education, and Lab Manual. See this blog post for more information and to sign up for a free account.
- Project MUSE
- Participating publishers will be offering free access to scholarly content through Project MUSE; the list of publishers can be found here.
- RedShelf
- RedShelf is also parterning with publishers to offer similar eBook access of up to seven (7) textbooks. Announcement and list of publishers here.
- VitalSource
This is just a short, curated list of vendors providing prmotional access; for more, see this list or this list. Have a list you want us to share? Drop us a line! Looking for content that's always open? Check out our OER and Open Access guides!
Books
The Lesley Library has a growing collection of eBooks that you can access from anywhere you are, so even if you are far from campus, you can access books on your topic. In order to limit your results in @LL Search to just eBooks, simply use the Limit to Library Location menu on the left column and select Lesley Ebook/Streaming. For more eBook troubleshooting questions, see I have a question about eBooks on the Self-Service Portal.
Articles
To find articles that you have access to through Lesley, the easiest way to start is through @LL Search. If you are looking specifically for articles, you can use the Limit to Format box on the lefthand side of your search results and select Academic Journals. For peer-reviewed articles, you can select Peer Reviewed Journals from the Advanced Search page or use the first Limit to box on your results page to select Peer Reviewed Journals. Double-check that you are logged in so that you are authenticated as a Lesley user and able to access articles! For questions about accessing articles, see I have a question about articles on the Self-Service Portal or Ask Us!
If you are trying to access a specific article you have been assigned and having trouble with off-campus access, try searching for the title in @LL Search. You may also want to try some of the troubleshooting steps such as clearing your cache. You are, as always, welcome to Ask Us!, but following these steps may be a more expedited way for you to gain access!
If you are looking for discipline specific resources, you may want to try searching some of the selections in our databases. You can also search for specific journals by going to our journals list, where you can see publications and the date ranges through which we offer access.
You can also search Google Scholar for articles. By default, Google Scholar will show you what is publicly available through an institutional repository or publisher or author's site, usually by displaying "[PDF]" to the right of the title. You can integrate the access you have to paywalled material as a Lesley student using Library Links, which allows you to combine what you may find through Google with what you can access through Lesley. Google Scholar and @LL Search use slightly different search algorithms, so an article may be higher in the results on one platform than another. By using Library Links, you can maximize what you can discover through Google Scholar.
Media
To find streaming media licensed through Lesley, you can enter your search terms or title in @LL Search and use the Limit to Format box to limit to either Video or Electronic Resources. Video will limit to DVD and streaming media, and Electronic Resources will limit to just streaming media. You can also search our streaming media databases, which have multidisciplinary databses like Academic Video Online, as well as subject specific databases such as the Psychotherapy.net Full Collection and Social Work Collection.
For streaming media beyond what Lesley offers, you can try looking at streaming media available through the public domain or Creative Commons licenses, such as:
- The Library of Congress National Screening Room
- Moving Image Archive
- Vimeo Creative Commons
- Vimeo Public Domain
- YouTube; filter your search results by "Features --> Creative Commons"