Research Guides: Research Services: Research Help

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Universal Access to Library Materials

The Healey Library is committed to providing library materials and services to all users. If you are an individual with a disability and need accommodation, please email: libraryaccessibility@live.umb.edu The library provides location and retrieval of library materials; photocopy services; and research assistance.

Boston Public Library

The Boston Public Library (BPL) is a research as well as a public library. Any Massachusetts resident or student is eligible for a BPL card or an eCard. Use either card to access all online resources including OverDrive (e-books, audiobooks) and Hoopla (e-books, audiobooks, movies, TV shows and music).

Other Academic Libraries

Boston Library Consortium (Requires BLC Card)
Current UMB faculty, staff and students, whose library records are in good standing, are eligible for a BLC card. The BLC card allows you to borrow materials from the libraries in the Boston Library Consortium when you physically visit those libraries. Check with individual college and universities libraries for borrowing policies.

Fenway Library Organization (Requires UMB ID)
Students, faculty, and staff must present a valid UMB ID card to borrow from FLC libraries. Check with individual college and universities libraries for borrowing policies.

Massachusetts Libraries in Public Higher Education (Requires UMB ID)
Direct borrowing privileges at most Massachusetts state college libraries are extended to current UMB faculty, staff, and students. You will need to have a current UMB ID.

UMB students using any consortia libraries are subject to the same regulations and restrictions that apply to students who attend that institution.

Popular Databases

Great starting points for multiple subject areas.

Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
Credo Reference provides access to a broad variety of reference sources from dictionaries to encyclopedias covering topics from the arts to the sciences. It has an image collection, maps, customizable data, and audio pronunciation files. You can search the whole collection or a specific subject area.
EBSCOhost Databases This link opens in a new window
Search all the EBSCO databases at one time, or select favorites like Academic Search Complete; whose indexed content is superb, it is easy to use, and there are a number of special features.
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations. Google Scholar helps you identify the most relevant research across the world of scholarly research.
HeinOnline This link opens in a new window
Contains more than 150 million pages of legal history and government documents including 2,300 law reviews and journals in an image-based PDF format from the legal publisher William S.Hein.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
JSTOR is a collection of thousands of high-quality academic journals and ebooks across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. The journal archive includes back issues and some current issues.
ProQuest Central This link opens in a new window
ProQuest Central is a comprehensive multidisciplinary research database. It provides access to databases across all major subject areas, including business, health and medical, social sciences, arts and humanities, education, science and technology, and religion. The collection includes thousands of full-text scholarly journals, newspapers, magazines, dissertations, working papers, and market reports all together in one platform.
ScienceDirect This link opens in a new window
ScienceDirect provides full text online access to over 4500 Elsevier journals and ebooks. The Backfiles program offers the ability to search a historical archive of over 6.75 million articles. This set of journals is a key component of Healey Library's online scholarly journal collection.

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Librarian Introduction Videos

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