Finding Materials Online

Beg, borrow, steal

Sci-hub (https://sci-hub.tw/) - Sci-hub is a website that provides free access to millions of research papers and some books, without regard to copyright, by bypassing publishers' paywalls in various ways. Because Sci-Hub and Elbakyan were sued twice for copyright infringement in the United States in 2015 and 2017, and lost both cases by default, the site has cycled through different domain names. Refer to the wikipedia entry on Sci-hub for the latest site address if the link doesn't work. Technology news website The Verge's profile of Sci-hub's founder Alexandra Elbakyan, provides a good overview on Sci-hub's ethical principles. To use, simply insert the DOI link or the stable link of a journal article into the text box.

Lib-gen (http://gen.lib.rus.ec/ or http://libgen.lc/ ) / B-ok or Z-lib (https://b-ok.cc/; https://z-lib.org/) - These two repositories contain overlapping and shared repositories. Occasionally they contain unique materials that have not yet been duplicated, so it pays to run a search on both repositories. Library Genesis is an online repository with over a million of user-contributed books and is the first project in history to offer everyone on the Internet free download of its entire book collection (as of this writing, about 15 Tb of data), together with the all metadata and code for webpages. The decision by Library Genesis to share its resources has resulted in a network of identical sites (so-called mirrors) through the development of an entire range of Net services of metadata exchange and catalog maintenance, thus ensuring an exceptionally resistant survival architecture.

Memory of the World (https://library.memoryoftheworld.org/) - books published by major university presses with a strong focus on the arts and humanities. Contains a lot of monographic publications that cannot be found elsewhere.

Aaaaarg.fail (https://aaaaarg.fail/) - the focus of the repository is primarily theoretical texts that can be applied across a wide range of disciplines in the arts and humanities. It was created by the artist Sean Dockray and serves as a library for the Public School – an online platform that supports offline autodidactic activities. Aaaaarg.org has grown into a community of researchers and enthusiasts from contemporary art, critical theory, philosophy, and related fields who maintain, catalog, annotate and run discussions relevant to their research interests. Invite-only database of books, mostly humanities. Blocked in North America but easily circumvented by VPN (configure the routing file to consistently go through a European country, for example).

Academia.edu (www.Academia.edu)
Directory of Open Access Journals (https://doaj.org/)
Googlebooks (https://books.google.com/)
Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com) - Useful for finding all the places a paper may be published. Often a paper behind a paywall is freely available elsewhere, and Google Scholar usually lists the link.
Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.
Archive.org (https://archive.org)
Hathi Trust Digital Library (https://www.hathitrust.org)
WorldCat (https://www.worldcat.org) - comprehensive catalogue on books and their holdings in libraries around the world. Particularly useful when you need to determine whether an ebook of a particular title is in any databases/holdings. Search result shows which holdings/databases have the eBook.

Other Digital Repositories

Monoskop (https://monoskop.org/) is a wiki for the arts, media and humanities.
The Anarchist Library (http://theanarchistlibrary.org/) is an archive focusing on anarchism, anarchist texts, and texts of interest for anarchists.
The Marxist Archive (https://www.marxists.org) maintains an archive of any and all writings which are Marxist or relevant to the understanding of Marxism and can be lawfully published.
UBU (http://ubu.com) is a web-based educational resource for avant-garde material available on the internet, founded in 1996 by poet Kenneth Goldsmith. It offers visual, concrete and sound poetry, expanding to include film and sound art mp3 archives.
Pad.ma (https://pad.ma/) short for Public Access Digital Media Archive - is an online archive of densely text-annotated video material, primarily footage and not finished films from India. The entire collection is searchable and viewable online, and is free to download for non-commercial use.
Pirate.Care (https://syllabus.pirate.care) Pirate Care is a manual on research process that maps the increasingly present forms of activism at the intersection of “care” and “piracy”. These practices are experimenting with self-organisation, alternative approaches to social reproduction and the commoning of tools, technologies and knowledges.

Ask for PDFs from People with Institutional Access

You might also want to join this facebook group ‘Ask for PDFs from People with Institutional Access’ (https://www.facebook.com/groups/850609558335839/), where members with institutional access are able to assist you in obtaining the information required, if they can.

However, the facebook group asks that before a person makes a request in the group, they should follow the flowchart attached below, to confirm whether or not the book can already be found online. It can be really annoying for those who genuinely want to help to learn that you are simply making a request without bothering to do the search first.

Following the steps of flowchart above should give you a pretty good sense of whether or not your materials are available online on general sharing platforms. For a more comprehensive review of the flowchart, request process, and search directory click on this link.

Batch Downloading and Merging PDFs

The following section suggests recommended softwards that are free and/or open source. One of them is for batch downloading pdf chapters. The second is a software that allows you to combine different pdf files into one file. The recommended softwares are:

1. For batch download, install DownloadThemAll! Plugin for your browser [Firefox/Opera/Chrome] https://www.downthemall.net/

2. For merging PDF files, install PDFsam Basic (decline upgrade option) https://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfsam/
   ** This is unnecessary if you already have a good PDF editor.

Batch download:

1. If institutional access is required, please log in.

2. Navigate to the page with the list of download links

3. Click DownloadThemALL! > DownloadThemAll! And select the chapters you want.

Merge pdfs:

1. You can use PDFsam to merge the chapters

2. A guide on how to use the website can be found here: https://pdfsam.org/pdf-merge/
   

How to use Google Scholar

Google Search like a Pro

While Google Scholar is a great database for secondary sources, it's unlikely you will be able to find primary sources there. For the study of history, the use of both primary and secondary sources are needed. This is why learning how to find archival documents online is valuable.

Google search can be tiring and unproductive owing to the amount of search results it produces. However, there are wants to refine and hack your searches to obtain more targeted search results.

• site:XXXXX 'XXXXX' here refers to the information you want to enter into the search bar. This search tells Google to limit your search to a particular site or domain. For instance, if you limit to site:Malaysiakini.com you would only search the site. Similarly site:gov would search only sites ending in .gov, and site:edu would search only sites ending in .edu.

• -XXXXX Adding a minus/hyphen sign "-" to a term will remove results with that term. This can be very helpful when removing common words associated with your topic.

• filetype:XXXX Using filetype: will only find certain file extensions (.doc, .pdf, .xcl, etc)

• "XXX XXXX" Putting double quotes around a phrase will find only that phrase.

• XXX OR XXXX Google's default is to look for all the words in your search. Using OR (must be capitalized) will allow you to look for any one or more of the words.

• cache:XXXX Retrieves an older version of the page from Google's cache

• link:XXXX Will list sites that link back to a specific URL

• info:XXXX Will retrieve information about a URL, including a cached version of the page, similar pages, and pages that link to the site.

You can also combine some of these search hacks, such as adding '-site:XXXX.com' to remove results from a website you do not want appearing in your search results. Another hack format is to include the word 'pdf' in your search, since most academic texts, scanned documents and books are published digitally in '.pdf' format.

There are many other ways to manipulate your search within Google:

• Word order--add your search terms in the order you think they will appear on the page

• Wildcard--an asterisk "*" can substitute for a word in a phrase

• Synonyms-- use a tilda: ~ in front of a word to find terms that Google thinks are synonyms for your term.

• Stemming-- Google will automatically stem a word (stem will find stems, stemming, stemmer, etc) unless you put a plus symbol "+" in front of it.

• Common words-- Drop superfluous words such as and, but, this, that, etc from your search. Google will ignore them anyway so save time and don't type them.

Find records by fields, using appropriate Boolean operator. To learn more, visit the following links

Refine web searches on Google (https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en)

Narrow down search results for complex searches by using the Advanced Search page. For example, you can find sites updated in the last 24 hours or images that are in black and white.
Advance searches on Google (https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/35890?hl=en&ref_topic=3081620)

Advanced google search (https://guides.lib.berkeley.edu/GoogleTips/Advanced)
Google Guide (Even more Advanced)(http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators_reference.html)
Google Arts and Culture (https://artsandculture.google.com)

Searching Online Collections

How to begin?

Enter into the search box key words about what you are looking for. Choose around 2-5 key words. This will generally perform a search across all categories in a collection.

A search engine is programmed to comb through data fields and related links to retrieve a list of results that matches your search terms. The search engine then shows you the most relevant results in descending order.

Adjusting your search, such as choosing some filters or changing some of your search terms - allows you to obtain different search results.

Unsuccessful searches

If you are finding too many things, some collections have search filtering function. Consider using the search filters to help narrow your search. Experiment with the filters to narrow down your results in different ways. You can select one filter in each group, or unselect it to select a different option in the group. Filters are a quick way to reduce the number if you have used common terms that provide too many results. Apply an image filter to show only things that have an image, or only those that have a downloadable image. Larger institutional repositories will often have a filter option that allows you to search for open access digital contents in their collection.

• Be more specific with your search terms. For example, instead of art, try painting; instead of document, try log entry.

• Add more terms, one at a time. For example, instead of cloak, try feather cloak

• Add search operators to make your search more specific (see below)
  

I don't find enough things, or none at all

• Check your spelling - if you are not sure you could try using wildcards (see below)

• Be more general with your search terms. For example, instead of kitten, try cat

If you still don't find enough, or any, results after trying these tips, it is possible that there is nothing in the collection. Try another collection.

I find wrong or unrelated things

The right things might be there, but are not at the top of the search results.

If you sometimes wonder why a result has been included, it’s likely the influence of related things such as people, places, or taxonomy.

• Add more terms, one at a time, to narrow your search (to bring the right things to the top of your results). For example, instead of cloak, try feather cloak

• If this option is available, you can Browse related links - choose a record that is right, view it, then scroll down to see its related objects and related links.

• Add search operators to make your search more specific (see below)

• Write an email to ask the institutional staff about the availability of the material.
  

How do I refine my search using operators?

Using Boolean operators - to be more specific. When a singular word is searched, the plural and possessive forms of that word will also be searched. However, if the word is enclosed in quotation marks, plural and possessive forms will not be searched.

Find records with at least one of these words (this is the default search, the 'OR' is optional)

• battle flag

• battle OR flag

Find records with both of these words (whether they exactly match "kauri table" or not) - this narrows your search

• battle AND flag

Find records containing this exact phrase - this narrows your search further

• "battle flag"

Find anything from the genus Haliotis, but exclude any of the species Jacnensis from the results - this allows greater precision

• haliotis NOT jacnensis

• haliotis -jacnensis

Find records about hikayat that mention Munshi Abdullah or Abdullah bin Abdul al Kadir, but exclude any that mention Singapore

• (hikayat AND ("Munshi Abdullah" OR "Abdullah bin Abdul al Kadir") NOT Singapore
  

Using wildcards - for different spellings

Wildcards can help when you’re not sure of spelling or can’t quite remember the right word. There are two wildcards available:

An asterisk can be used to replace more than one character anywhere in your search terms. For example, to find international, internalise, intern, interdict, interdisciplinary, etc.:

• inter*

A question mark can replace one character anywhere in your search terms. For example, to find brain, braun, brawn, or any other letter in place of the ? :

• bra?n

What is open access?

Click on the youtube video below to learn more about the ethical principles that informs the promotion of open accesss knowledge .