Beyond the BU Libraries
There are several ways you can obtain books or articles that we do not own. These include:
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WorldCat Discovery. WorldCat Discovery allows current BU faculty, staff, and students to borrow books directly from other Boston Library Consortium libraries. Turnaround time is approximately three working days. (How to use WorldCat Discovery)
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Interlibrary Loan. Interlibrary Loan services allow current BU faculty, staff, and students to request books, articles, book chapters, and other materials that our ILL staff will obtain from other libraries. Books generally take 1-3 weeks to arrive; articles are delivered electronically within 1-2 days.
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ILL online request forms for all patrons except those affiliated with the Schools of Law and Medicine
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For general inquires to the Interlibrary Loan office, please call (617) 353-3706 or email ILLMML@bu.edu.
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- BLC Cards. A Boston Library Consortium Card allows the bearer to borrow—in person—circulating material from a member library, just as you would from a BU library. Boston University faculty, staff, and students on the Charles River Campus may obtain a Consortium Card by filling out an application form. Medical Campus affiliates apply at the Alumni Medical Library.
Cited Reference Searching
Cited reference searching (also known as "forward searching") allows you to see if a particular article has been cited in more recent research. This is an excellent way to:
- See if an article has been influential in the field of study you are interested in. If an article has been cited many times, this can mean that it has had a strong impact on a given area of research.
- Check to make sure you are getting the most current information. An author who has cited an article that you have found may provide you with more up-to-date information.
- Find additional information on your topic.
These are two tools for searching cited references:
- Web of Science This link opens in a new window This database is a core general science resource, covering all aspects of scientific literature. It also has a number of tools that make it a unique resource for finding scholarly literature. Item records come with links both to the works cited by the paper in question and the future works that cite that paper. Web of Science also allows the user to set up email alerts for specific authors or topics, provides researcher profiles, and to use associated journal metrics provided by the vendor.
- Google Scholar This link opens in a new window Google Scholar provides access to academic literature from many disciplines. The sources include articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions and come from diverse places including academic publishers, online repositories and other websites.
Tools for Managing Your Research
- RefWorks: RefWorks is an online tool that is free to all BU users. It allows you to store and organize citations, and generate bibliographies within a matter of seconds. Use RefWorks if you want to use a tool that works seamlessly with databases such as CINAHL and PsycInfo. It works well with PubMed, but requires an extra step.
- Mendeley: A free, online tool for all users. Similar to RefWorks, and it works seamlessly with PubMed.
- Zotero: Another freely available citation tool for storing your references and creating reference pages.
