1. What type of resources do you need for your work? Do you need books, articles, reports, statistics, research data, brochures, annual reports, journals, textbooks, newspapers or legislation? There is a wide selection of different materials available, which are listed in the Library’s guides. The Subject Guides will help you choose information sources.
2. Where should you start the information retrieval? The topic and scope of the information retrieval influence the choice of resources. You should always search for information from multiple sources, because one source or database is usually not enough. The university library has bought most of the key subscription-based electronic books and journals for the university community to use. These types of resources require you to use your UTU credentials to access from outside the university’s network. So always use the library’s links to access the resources via UTU login. Start your search from the library collections and the library’s Volter database. When you search in English, you will also find lots of electronic books and articles from Volter.
3. What is freely available online? A lot of scholarly information is freely available in open repositories, open access portals and through different international aggregators. These sources are described in this guide, as well as in the library’s other guides.
4. Why use printed books or journals? Despite electronic publishing, some books and journals are still being published only in print. In addition, most of the older printed resources have not been digitised. For example, older theses are mostly only available in print. At the University of Turku, printed resources are available in discipline-specific libraries, you can use the Volter database to find the resources.
