This is a quick introduction to how to
use the Philosophers Index. We will begin
at the University's web page. Click
'Academics' and scroll down to 'Library.'
This takes you to the Phillips Library's
landing page. Click databases A-to-Z. This
launches a new tab. Click P. Scroll down:
you'll see that we have access to four
different philosophy databases: Past
Masters (Philosophy), Philosophers Index,
Philosophy Documentation Center, and
PhilPapers. We'll use today Philosophers
Index. You can enter any search term in
the search bar and apply other
limitations or filters. Let's look for
"final causes." Here we see the results.
Some of these results are linked full
text, some are PDF full text, which means
that we can pull up the actual document
right now today. Others indicate that we
need to request the item through
interlibrary loan. Suppose I want to read
this article, "Nested Explanation in
Aristotle and Mayer." I click it and I get an
a screen with information about this: the
name of the journal, the edition, the page
numbers. This is from 2016 so it's quite
recent. And an abstract.
After I read the abstract, if I decide
that I would like to request the article
I would click over here on the left side
to request the article through
interlibrary loan. This would bring up an
interlibrary loan request form where I
would put in my name and library barcode
number and click Submit.
In this case I'm going to go back and
take a look at this article, "Without
Purpose: Modernity and the Loss of Final
Causes." Again I get a page with
information and the abstract. This is from
May of 2010, a journal article about the
nature of boredom. If I decide I'd like
to read it it's linked here as PDF full
text. I simply click that link and the
article downloads and in my case, with my
browser settings, opens in my own version,
my resident version of Adobe Acrobat.
It may also open in your browser window.
I can save it to my to my hard drive if I wish.
I will go back again and take a
look at this other type of article,
linked full text. This article on
Aristotle and Spinoza in the Journal of the
History of Philosophy, July 2016. Again, an
abstract that I can read to discover if
I want to read the full article. I click
"linked full text" and it launches a new
tab, taking me to EBSCOhost to see if I
can get access to the full text of the
journal. And here we are in the link I
can now scroll through and read online
the entire text of the article. If I wish
to download it I can click up here and
again as before I will, either in my
browser or in my resident Adobe Acrobat,
end up with a copy of the article which
I can then print or save to my hard
drive, as I like. Going back now to our
search screen, if I want to enter
Advanced Search I can limit my searches
to peer-review, to things that are just
book reviews or journal articles, I can
limit them by publication or
availability of full text, I can repeat
my search with those filters. I discover
my 300 results is now down to 55, but
in each case here I have just either PDF
full-text or linked full text available.
I could also limit these by subject
keyword, by date using these sliders here:
if I want to read only articles
published in the last 10 years I can
drag my sliders in that way. My number of
results is now down to 33. If I wish I
can take off some of my limiters if I do
not wish to limit myself just to
peer-reviewed journal articles. It turns
out that doesn't make any difference in
this case. So that is a quick
introduction to the way to use the
Philosopher's Index to get access to
recent philosophy scholarship. I hope you
found it helpful. Goodbye.