I tried to track down an article today without much success, and I took screenshots because at one point I wondered at which stage I’d have given up if I was a normal library patron, not a librarian who has an inclination to exhaust every possibility when trying to track something down.

Step 1:

I’ve found a nifty looking article citation online:

Step 2:

I want to read the article, so I click on the link only to find this. I’m taken to the publisher page for the journal. Although I think my library subscribes to the journal, I don’t have access to it from this page.

When I click on the link for a pdf version of the article I get this:

By now, I’ve gone through 2 web sites.

Step 3:

OK, clearly I need to visit my library’s electronic journals page to get access to the article online. So I go there, and do a search for the name of the journal and find this entry:

Cool, we have it. I’ll click on the link that has the most recent copies. I’ve visted two more web sites now, the library home page and the e-journals list page. That brings the total to 4.

I see a bunch of articles, but not the one I want. Now, this is where I should have picked up on the fact that the most recent articles displayed are from September, but I’m looking for an article from November. But I have a cold, so I’m a little spaced out and I don’t notice this. Hmm, I say to myself. Maybe I should search for the title or author of the article? Both of those searches are ineffective, so I try to search for the name of the journal again, using the journal name option from the pull-down menu on the search form only to get the following screen.

I find this rather odd, as I was just looking at some articles from the journal in question, yet the database is telling me it doesn’t have the journal. Fine, most databases have a master list of journals included. I notice this button:

And I click on it only to find what I should have picked up on earlier:

The issue I need isn’t in the database yet. Oh well! I’ve visited 5 different web sites at this point, each with a different look and feel. At this point, I go ahead and post the citation to my del.icio.us account, so hopefully I’ll remember to look for it later.