Library Guides
Librarians have created guides for every academic subject on campus, as well as for courses and broader topics. View all published guides here for pointers on how to tackle beginning a search in a specific area.
Openly Available Resources
The resources below are a sampling of non-SU resources. These are accessible from off-campus.
- Data.gov
Data.gov is a federal open government data site managed and hosted by the U.S. General Services Administration. It collects information on the total number of datasets and dataset collections. Data is separated into categories, some of which include, business, climate, consumers, education, health, ocean, and public safety, among others. - Public Library Databases
Maryland’s public libraries share a collection of Internet-based research databases that are purchased through the Sailor database budget. They are available to anyone with a Maryland public library card. - Eastern Shore Regional Library
ESRL also provides access to databases with a public library card. This links to another guide with the ESRL links as well as the SAILOR ones above.
Accessing the Libraries
Alumni and members of the wider community are welcome to use the resources available in the Salisbury University Libraries. The Guerrieri Academic Commons is open to the public without a Community Access Card during our Visitor Access Hours listed below. If you would like to access the building outside of these hours, you will need a Community Access Card to gain entry to the Guererri Academic Commons and Conway Hall.
- Monday-Thursday 10 am-6 pm
- Friday 10 am-5 pm
- Saturday 12 pm-5 pm
- Sunday 12 pm-6 pm
Requesting a Community Access Card
- Complete and submit a Community Access Card request form. You will receive confirmation of your request by email.
- We will mail your Community Access Card to the address you provided on the form. This will include instructions for use, as well as the due date that the card must be returned by.
- Once you receive your card in the mail, you can use it to access the Guerrieri Academic Commons and Conway Hall (where the Curriculum Resource Center is located) during regular operating hours.
For further information, refer to our Library Services for Alumni and Community page or email Amy Jones, Head of Circulation, at amjones@salisbury.edu.
Books
Maryland residents of Wicomico, Worcester, Somerset, and Dorchester Counties may apply for a free Special Borrower Card at the Library Service Desk and must present it when borrowing items. As a part of that, community borrowers are able to check out books from the general stacks and leisure books, as well as CDs, DVDs, and headphones. To find out more about loan privileges as well as paid account types, check out the Borrowing Policies page.
Use the box below to search for books in SU Libraries' collections.
Search Library Databases
Searching a library database successfully requires different skills than searching a search engine like Google. Identifying keywords and alternate keywords will improve your results. See the example below.
Research Question: "How does media affect voting in young people?"
Keywords: media voting young people
Alternate keywords require you to identify synonyms, broader ideas, and narrower concepts. For the example of media, one might generate a list of words like this:
mass media
social media
social networking
entertainment
news
print newspaper
television
CNN
Databases
Library databases can be used by non-SU patrons only when on-campus. Community patrons can obtain a temporary user ID (available for up to two weeks) from the Library Service Desk. Patrons need only bring a valid photo-ID to register for one.
While a complete list of all our databases can be accessed here, the ones below might be of particular use. Academic Search Ultimate and JSTOR are both databases covering a wide variety of areas; starting broadly with them is usually a good start. Statista is a great resource if statistics are needed.
- Academic Search Ultimate This link opens in a new window
Academic Search Ultimate offers access to an unprecedented collection of resources including journals, magazines, reports, books, and videos. Many are peer-reviewed and full-text. Subjects range from astronomy to zoology.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new windowJSTOR provides access to more than 12 million journal articles, books, images, and primary sources in 75 disciplines. Includes complete runs of journals with full-text of all articles published prior to the most current five years; eBooks; ArtStor images; and primary sources. Coverage spans the humanities, sciences, and social sciences.
- ScienceDirect This link opens in a new windowScienceDirect's Freedom Collection includes extensive full-text journal coverage of the physical and biological sciences, as well as some coverage of the social sciences and humanities. For a LIMITED TIME, Elsevier is making all of their textbooks available at no charge, as well as 20,000 free articles.
- Statista This link opens in a new windowStatista.com, by Statista, Inc. provides data on over 60,000 topics from over 18,000 sources, categorized into 21 market sectors. Statista.com provides quantitative data on media, business, finance, politics, and a wide variety of other areas.
- SPIN
InfoEd's database of sponsored funding opportunities. "The site is designed for institutional executives, principal Investigators, research administrators, and other faculty and students involved in the research process."
