Although Wageningen UR library has a large collection of journals and books, you may want to read articles or books that the library does not own, or subscribes to. You can ask the library to order these publications from other libraries, but this is a paid service. For students who have to pay the costs themselves, this will be a barrier in the information retrieval process.
Alternative and free methods to obtain at least some of the books or articles are listed below.
- Since a few years authors are stimulated to make a version of their papers available to digital institutional
repositories. Search engines to find these articles are Scientific Commons
and BASE, but also Google Scholar and
Scirus cover part of the digital archives. When you do not find a direct link in Google Scholar, try the link All versions
for more options. WorldCat is also a good source to find free articles (choose the tab Articles).
Some authors place a version of their papers on a personal webpage. These papers are easier to find with Google.
- Most university libraries are public places and their journals and databases are freely accessible for all visitors via
terminals or computers in the library. Moreover, as a student or university staff member you can borrow books for free at other
university libraries, if you go there in person and show your WUR-card. Search WorldCat or the NCC (Dutch Central Catalogue) to find out which library has the required journal,
book or database.
- When you find an article in a database, often an e-mail address of one of the authors is mentioned. Contacting the author is usually a quick way to obtain the full text.
 Wageningen Digital Library, 10 March 2010
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