Last year I wrote a post called Finding Access, talking about several browser tools you can use to discover easily whether a particular publication has an open access version. As an update to that post I'd like to share another browser extension and a new infographic released by the UKB, the association of Dutch academic libraries, both of which can help get to the publication you want.

Leiden Search Assistant

Let’s start with the new Chrome browser extension. It is called the Leiden Search Assistant and was developed by my colleagues in our Digital Services department. Once you've installed the extension you'll have a small icon featuring three books in the top bar of your screen. Here you'll be able to search our catalogue, WorldCat, Google Scholar or PubMed without having to navigate away from the page you are on. It will also allow you select a search term, ISBN, author's name, or what have you and by right-clicking on your selection you will be able to use the context menu to choose where you want to search. So if you find an interesting book online, say at Amazon, you can immediately check whether we have it in our library collection.

You can find the Leiden Search Assistant in the Chrome webstore and check out this short video to see the Assistant in action.

UKB's How to get the PDF?

In February 2018, the UKB, the Dutch consortium of the thirteen university libraries and the National Library of the Netherlands, released an infographic detailing how to find the PDF for an article your institution doesn't provide access for. Many of the options mentioned there are Open Access options and different browser tools, which are helpful to use. You can find the infographic on openaccess.nl