A Guide for International Students at USA: Finding Resources

The SOUTHcat (USA Libraries' Catalog) contains records for books, e-books, journals, CD-ROMs, CDs, DVDs, videos, and government documents held by all locations of  the libraries at the University of South Alabama. It does not list journal articles.

SOUTHcat can be searched in many different ways, but the most useful search types for students are:

• keyword: example -- math? history
• Title: example -- Sun Also Rises (when a title starts with "a", "an" or "the", the initial article is not included in the search)
• Author: example -- Twain, Mark (last name is first)
• Subject: example -- Epilepsy in children --Psychological aspects. (These subjects are either Library of Congress or Medical Subject Headings (MESH) so students aren't likely to know them but they will run across them when searching the catalog.

  The University Libraries have been buying electronic books recently; currently we have approximately 300,000 ebooks. Many of these can be accessed through SOUTHcat and will show up in the results of a search. Not all of our ebooks, however, are in SOUTHcat.

General

Business

Education

Health and Medicine

Science

Use Google Scholar through the Marx Library's web site in order to access the University Libraries' full-text resources when you are not on campus. Follow these steps:

• Go to the Library's web site at http://library.southalabama.edu and choose Internet Search Engines
• When you choose Google Scholar, you will be asked to login as you did for our databases
• Once you get to Google Scholar, choose Scholar Preferences next to the Search box
• In the Library Links box, type University of South Alabama
• You should get five choices: University of South Alabama (Full Text@IngentaConnect), University of South Alabama - Full-Text@USA ; Alabama Virtual Library - AONE Full Text@AVL , Open WorldCat (Library Search); and University of South Alabama - USA eText
• Check the boxes in front of each one except Alabama Virtual Library - AONE Full Text @ AVL and University of South Alabama - USA eText
• Click Save Preferences

You should now be able to connect to the full-text of subscribed University Libraries' resources if they are part of the results of your search.