Find It FAQ

Watch this short video to get an overview of Find it or view a 3-minute video for more information.

What is  ?
How do I use Find It?
Where do all the links to content go?
Why is the "article" link not always available?
Sometimes there are many options for full text and journal links. Why?
How do I get to the article if there is only a journal or database link?
Why does Find It provides an article-level link even though the full text of the article is not available?
Additional Questions?

What is ?

Well, it is not a search engine. Here's how it works: when you find a citation or reference to a specific article or book in an online database, Find It supplies the best available path to the content, anywhere in the library's collection. Find It is a full-featured OpenURL link resolver that seamlessly links most of our libraries resources.

How do I use ?

Clicking the button (or clicking on a link) within an OpenURL-enabled database produces the Find It results page with direct links to one or more of the following:

• Full text of the article
• Journal's table of contents page, which then links to the full text of the article
• Database home page, which must be searched to retrieve the full text
• Our Library catalog, CLICnet
• Various custom links such as interlibrary loan forms

Where do all the links to content go?

Depending on the content provider, content may be available at the article, journal, or database levels. If we subscribe to the journal in print format only, the link may go to CLICnet, our library catalog, to help you identify which library owns the journal and where it is shelved.

Why is the "article" link not always available?

If the article link is absent from the Find It results page it could be due to one of the following reasons:

• The libraries do not subscribe to the full text for that particular title
• The publisher of the title may not provide full text online
• There is not enough data in the search criteria to trigger an article-level link
• The provider of the journal does not support OpenURL linking
• The item you have found is not a journal article

Sometimes there are many options for full text and journal links. Why?

The same journal is often times available in more than one database.  Find It will display the links to all content accessible to the University of St. Thomas community, from the databases to which we subscribe.

How do I get to the article if there is only a journal or database link?

In cases where Find It can only take you to the journal's table of contents or a database home page, you will have to browse the table of contents to locate the issue and article you need, or search the database to retrieve the full text article. You can often find the details such as issue and page numbers right in the information on the results page.

  provides an article-level link even though the full text of the article is not available when I click on that link. Why?

This can occur for several reasons:

• Full text articles are withheld from the online versions of the database by the publisher or author.
• Sometimes indexing information appears in a database before the publisher has made the full text available.
• Sometimes the coverage dates are not supplied in the library's data, and Find It will provide an article link with the hope that your library has access to that date range.

Additional Questions?

If you have additional questions about your results, please ask a librarian.