SGU Virtual Library: Help: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Here are the questions that we get asked most often.

1. How do I read the full-text of a magazine, newspaper, or journal article on the Internet?
2. Where can I find the text of a book called ...
3. Why don't you use cool graphics and animations on your site?
4. I found a really great site that I think you should include in the Native American Collection.  How can I submit it?

1. Q.  How do I read the full-text of a magazine, newspaper, or journal article on the Internet?

A. Some magazines, newspapers, and journals have web sites where you can read the full-text of an article free of charge.  Often, however, these web sites provide only articles from the current issue.  Many do not provide access to articles in back issues unless you pay them a fee for each article.  Some do not provide access to back issues at all.  Because these articles are copyrighted, many publishers do not wish to make them available for free.

The SGU Virtual Library generally avoids linking to web sites that require you to pay a fee.  Access to commercial online databases of magazine and journal articles is coming soon.
 

2. Q.  Where can I find the text of a book called ...?

A. Most publishers copyright their books and don't make them available for free on the Internet.  A copyright prevents someone else from legally publishing a work and now lasts quite a long time (until 50 years after the author's death).  When a copyright expires, the work passes into the public domain and anyone can then publish it legally.

Some books such as the works of Shakespeare or Mark Twain are old enough that their copyrights have expired.  These books (often called electronic texts or etexts) are in the public domain and many of them are available on the Internet.  You can find these electronic texts in the AIHEC Virtual Library, available from the Virtual Library's By Subject link.  But you won't find the current bestseller available for free online.
 

3. Q. Why don't you use cool graphics and animations on your site?

A. We assume that most people who use a library want to find what they are looking for as quickly as possible.  So we have tried to design our site to be easy to get around in, with pages that load quickly and don't have a lot of distracting graphics.
 
4. Q. I found a really great site that I think you should include in the Native American Collection.  How can I submit it?

A. We are always looking for good sites, but we do evaluate a web site before we include it.  If you send us the web address, we'll take a look at your site. Note that the SGU Virtual Library generally does not include sites that charge for their information, that exist primarily to advertise products for sale, or that don't fit in with our mission.

http://www.oocities.org/sguvl/help/vlfaq.html

Updated: May 30, 2001

Contact: virtuallib@sinte.edu