Example 1: A Journal Article

One of the things that makes online education possible these days is the presence of good online resources. The De Anza library computer system is a great example. There are many books and journals that we can access for free through this system, and they'll be really helpful to us anytime we want to look something up.

Let's take one of my favorite examples: Finding an article in Sky and Telescope magazine. S&T has been published since 1941, and it's one of the main magazines for amateur astronomers. The writing and editorial staff has been doing a great job of covering astronomy and planetary science for many decades, and it's a great source for simple overviews of a topic, as well as for detailed information on many subjects.

Here's an example to get us started: Imagine that a friend of yours excitedly told you, one day, that "...there's this great article in S&T about Pluto's surface! If you open up the October 2016 issue, you can read about all the amazing things the New Horizons spacecraft saw on Pluto's surface during the July 2015 flyby. You're not going to believe what the mission's geologists have concluded about Pluto's geologic activity!"

Now, after hearing that breathless sales pitch, how could you resist? You'd want to dig into the October 2016 issue as soon as possible... except... how are you going to read an article in an issue of a magazine that you don't have? Good news - as a registered student at De Anza College, the same login credentials that get you into MyPortal will get you into the library computer! And this is what will get you to that juicy article about the amazing exploration of Pluto in 2015, carried out by the New Horizons space probe and the intrepid scientists and engineers back on Earth who launched it.

(Note: In the following walkthrough, I assume you're logged into Canvas while you're accessing the library computer. If so, you probably won't need to enter your Canvas / MyPortal login credentials at any point in the process. But if you want to use the library computer when you're not logged into Canvas, it may ask for your login credentials, and that's okay. It's a normal part of the library's computer system, to make sure that only De Anza folks are able to access the books and journals. If you know someone who'd like to access these resources, just encourage them to sign up for a class!)

(BONUS: Once you see how this is done for Sky & Telescope magazine, you can also try using this method for a magazine called Astronomy - we have access to some of the back issues of that one, too! It's the other main magazine for amateur astronomers.)

Start by opening this link in a new browser tab: deanza.edu/library. (A good way to do that is to right-click on it and select `Open Link in New Tab'.) You should see a webpage that looks roughly like the one shown below. Click on "Search Journals by Title":

De Anza College library webpage

That should bring you to the Electronic Journals list, where you'll type "sky and telescope" and click Search:

De Anza College library journal search webpage

On the next page, click on "MasterFILE Complete":

De Anza College library journal search result page

Clicking on "MasterFILE Complete" should take you to the listing of the years (of S&T) that are available. We don't have the magazine's whole run, going back to 1941, but we can access issues from 1994 to the present.

Click on 2016, as shown below:

De Anza College library page showing the available years of Sky and Telescope magazine

Once you've clicked 2016, click on the October issue, as shown here:

De Anza College library webpage, showing how to click on the October 2016 issue of Sky and Telescope magazine

Clicking on October 2016 will take you to the top of the first page of the Table of Contents, which should look roughly like this:

De Anza College library webpage, showing the top of the table of contents of the online-access version of the October 2016 issue of Sky and Telescope magazine

At this point, your goal is to find an article called "Pluto's Amazing Story", but you might not see it yet. You'll probably need to scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Page 2 of the Table of Contents, like this:

De Anza College library webpage, showing the bottom of the first page of the table of contents of the October 2016 issue of Sky and Telescope magazine

Now you have probably arrived at a webpage that shows a listing for an article called "Pluto's Amazing Story". Click on the "PDF Full Text" link for that story:

De Anza College library webpage, showing the desired article on Pluto from the October 2016 issue of Sky and Telescope magazine

Now, having clicked on "PDF Full Text", you should see the article:

Online version of article about Pluto, from the October 2016 issue of Sky and Telescope magazine