Ok folks, what I'm about to reveal here could put me in extreme danger as it involves disclosing a tightly-held secret in Libraryland, namely, that librarians are surreptitiously accumulating, preserving and making available the world's store of knowledge! Under no circumstances should you share this information with anyone, including your family, friends or students.
A couple of days ago I was skimming through my RSS feeds (see my next blog for more on this) when I came across a subject that has always fascinated me:
As I read the article, I came across a reference to an even more interesting sounding article:
Now I was really excited. There are some "250,000 psychopaths living freely in the U.S." I was going to figure out how to identify them and understand what's going on in their minds. So I clicked on the article link only to find out that I'd have to fork over $7.95 to read the article:
Well, I really needed to read this article for my own safety and those around me. What choice did I have but to get out my credit card and enter the required information......
Yeah right, a librarian paying for a magazine article! That could get you excommunicated from the profession.
What I am about to divulge is a little-known library hack designed to circumvent such nuisances as having to pay for information. It was developed in Libraryland and is disclosed to future members of the profession in a class called Hacking the Information Environment. All that's required is some basic knowledge of HTML programming and some freely available password cracking software...
Ok, let's get serious! We don't learn hacking in library school. No need to. What you laypeople (non-librarians) probably didn't know is that we librarians have been accumulating hundreds of thousands if not millions of articles for decades and making them freely available to a select few (namely anyone with a library card).
So how does it work?
As I reside in Denver, I will use Denver Public Library as an example. The process is virtually the same no matter where you live as librarians like standardization.
First step, go to the Denver Public Library homepage (http://denverlibrary.org). Click on the "Databases" tab. You can think of that Databases tab as the Google button of the library. You'll get high-quality encyclopedia entries and articles relating to any search term you enter there.
Now, simply type (copy-paste) the article title in the search box...
...and click "Search." After filling in my library card information, Voilà , there she is:
Upon clicking on the article link, you are taken to its entry in the database. Click on the "HTML Full-Text" link on the left and you're in business.
Here is the full-text article for free all from the comfort of your armchair:
You can even have the article read to you--with an Australian accent!
