Getting Books and Articles

Getting Books

If you have found a circulating item (one that can be checked out) at any MOBIUS Consortium library, you may go to that library and use your UMSL ID card to check out that item in person. An institutional photo I.D. or an institutional I.D., plus a government issued photo I.D. (e.g., driver's license, state I.D., passport, etc.) will be required to check out materials as a Visiting Patron. Additionally, you may request a book from any MOBIUS member library using the "Pick Up Anywhere" feature of the online catalog, and have it delivered to any campus in the consortium.

If the book is NOT owned by a MOBIUS Consortium library, you may fill out an online Interlibrary Loan form requesting the book, however, currently we can only deliver such books to the UM-St. Louis campus. Books requested through Interlibrary Loan must be picked up at the Thomas Jefferson Library.

Getting Articles

(1) Check to see if the article is available in full-text online.

Click on Article Linker while searching in a database to check for full text.
If you have a journal citation use the UM-St. Louis Journal Titles Online Database. Be sure to search for the title of your journal, magazine, or newspaper and NOT the title of the article you're seeking.

(2) If an article is not available online, you can request a copy using the online Interlibrary Loan form to request an article. SPECIAL NOTES ABOUT USING THE INTERLIBRARY LOAN FORM: (1) You will need to enter your Student ID Number (on your Student ID Card) to login; (2) When you enter your FIRST NAME put the words Distance Student in parentheses after your first name. E.g.,

First Name:

(3) You can then request the article to be mailed to you, or use our new faster service and request “Email Electronic Delivery”. We will send you an email link plus a new password that will allow you to download or print articles from a secure website.

(4) You may want to find if the journal you are seeking is at a nearby library where you could go and look at the article or photocopy it.You can use various library catalogs to do this, such as:

Finally, if in a real rush and you can not wait for the other services, in an emergency you can purchase articles, in most cases immediately and online, using the ingenta database. Note that the cost for purchasing a single article ranges from $15 to over $100 in some cases (a rule of thumb is to expect to pay about $30 per article).