Module 4: Using Galileo

What is GALILEO?

GALILEO stands for GeorgiA LIbrary LEarning Online.

GALILEO databases provide access to journal articles with full-text books and periodicals, reference sources, and links to quality internet sites. Most of GALILEO can even be accessed from home!

GALILEO vs. GIL

Should I use GALILEO or GIL?

Use GALILEO to find journal articles and citations. GALILEO indexes articles in thousands of periodicals. Those periodicals could be found in your library, or in a library in Seattle, or only exist in a database on a server in Washington.

Use GIL to find books, periodical titles, government documents, and other items located in the James E. Carter Library.

A project of the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia

Where you begin

The picture above is GALILEO’s homepage.

You will find a link for the GALILEO homepage on the James E. Carter Library Homepage: http://www.gsw.edu/~library

On the GALILEO homepage you'll see links that offer you a quick way to get going in a number of directions to locate journal articles for your paper, speech, research project or other informational needs.

A project of the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia

 Working with the Search Categories

  An overview of navigation features

·         Browse by Subject. When you click on Browse by Subject, a list of subjects or disciplines will appear in the work area. Make a selection from the list to retrieve a subcategory list. After you choose a subcategory, you will link to a search screen where you may be able to place limits on your search and search one or multiple databases.

·         Browse by Type. When you click on Browse by Type, such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, newspapers, etc., a category list of publication types will appear. After selecting a publication type, you will link to a list of databases.

·         Databases A-Z. The Databases A-Z selection enables you to browse the entire list of databases available to you and browse databases that begin with a specific letter of the alphabet. You may also search by database name or keyword by typing the name of the database or keyword in the “Find Database” search box.

·         Journals A-Z is the one-stop shopping place to locate specific journals and to search for a specific journal article when you have the citation information - author, title, publication information. You can browse a list of journals by letter of the alphabet or search by name or keyword.

·         The Search option allows you to simultaneously search single or multiple words in selected search fields across multiple databases.

A project of the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia

Getting Started in GALILEO

The homepage of GALILEO gives you many options to search for information. The easiest way to find what you need is to think about what class you are needing a journal article for a paper or presentation. If you need an article for a History class, click the subject heading "History." If you are looking for something for Biology class, try the databases under "Science and Technology."

Once you choose your subject heading, you can narrow your search using the drop down menu. Then it is time to begin your search!

A project of the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia

Search Results

Once you enter your keywords into the search box, you will be presented with a list of results that will look similar to this, where you can choose to look at citations (which just contain author, title, publication information and a short paragraph about the article) or the full text of the journal article:

To view the full text of an article, click on the View PDF button.

A project of the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia