Finding Free and Open Resources

Along with open educational resources, GALILEO and your USG institution’s library provide many educational resources to you and your students free of charge.

GALILEO and USG Library Resources

GALILEO, which stands for “GeorgiA LIbrary LEarning Online,” is an initiative of the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia. GALILEO is an online library portal to authoritative, subscription-only information that is not available through free search engines or Web directories.

Participating institutions may access more than 100 databases indexing thousands of periodicals and scholarly journals. More than 10,000 journal titles are provided in full-text. Other resources include eBooks, encyclopedias, business directories, and government publications. Through collaboration and resource sharing, GALILEO seeks to provide equal access to information for all Georgia residents, and Affordable Learning Georgia supports these efforts.

All USG faculty, students, and staff have access to databases, articles, ebooks, and more through the GALILEO website, as well as their library’s website and LibGuides and the GALILEO LibGuides.

Your institution’s GALILEO Search resources licensed through GALILEO and resources licensed through your local library. Try searching below:

Using Permanent Links

Permanent links (or “permalinks”) provide a way for you to link to a library resource and not have to worry about electronic resources shifting. When using library resources, use permanent links (also called “permalinks.”) In GALILEO Discover (from EBSCO), you can get the permalink for any resource by going to the full record (click on the title to get there), and then clicking on “Permalink” on the right sidebar.

For non-EBSCO databases, check out the San Jose State University Permanent Links Guide, which lists databases and provides detailed instructions on how to get permanent links in each one.

Reflection

1. What academic fields do you feel would benefit the most from using library resources as textbook replacements? Are there any fields where finding library resources for a course would be difficult?

2. How can you make these resources easier to locate for students who are not a part of your institution, or former students who have graduated but want to find the library materials from your course elsewhere?