5 otázek k e-zdrojům

What are e-resources?

E-resources, electronic information resources, databases… they go by a variety of names, but what they have in common is that they contain various forms of information and are available electronically (usually online).

While there are all kinds of e-resources, our focus here is on the ones that you will be using the most as students and employees of the Faculty of Social Sciences. These are fee-based e-resources funded by Charles University or by the Faculty itself, so as long as you are here you will not have to pay a thing.

What can you find in them?

• you can look up books and journals in the UKAŽ, service, which scours most (but not all!) of the resources available at Charles University in a single search; any resources not covered by this service can be searched directly 
• when it comes to journals, you’ll usually be looking for specific papers
• newspapers
• economic data (macroeconomic indicators, business information, reports, etc.)

How do they work?

Put simply, e-resources are commercial products that purchase the rights to books, papers and journals and sell them either directly to readers or to libraries and universities, which then make them available to their users.

What is full text?

• most of the time you will want to access a whole book or paper, so search for full texts
• occasionally an e-resource will not have the full text, but you will still be given information about the book/paper (title, author, abstract), so although you are unable to retrieved the book/paper here, you know it exists and you can buy it or try to obtain it from somewhere else

How are e-resources accessed?

You need active access to CAS. Then, search for a specific book or paper in UKAŽ or browse the Electronic Resources Portal, where you will find access to various e-resources.