While it might seem that everything is available for free online, libraries subscribe to databases and journals and make their contents available to you. There are three levels of convenience.

1. Some publishers grant copyright permission to individual databases to put their articles online. You might simply see a link to the full text of an article.

2. If there is no link to full-text, look for the UILink button integrated into each database the UI Libraries buys access to. UILink checks to see if we have online access to your article from any other source and links you out to it.

3. If no one has copyright permission to make an article available online, UILink will connect you to our Article Delivery Service and we'll scan a copy to pdf and deliver it to you online. If we do not have the article in print in our collections, we will automatically try to get it from another library through our Inter-Library Loan department.

Dan and other UI Librarians can do more than help you find books. We can talk through your research interests with you to help you clarify what you're researching, We can recommend the best databases or other tools to use for your particular research need. We can help you think about how the different ideas in your research fit together, suggest useful search terms and strategies and search alongside you to help you find what you need. We all work well with each other, too, and if we're not the right librarian for your need we can connect you with the librarian who is right for you.