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For Broke College Students When Your University Is Failing You During a Pandemic aka How To Access Research Materials When Your School Cuts Off Library/Journal Access: A Thread (folks in the know, please please add to this!)
Google Books!!! I am forever surprised that students don't think of this. They don't include the full text, but they might include just enough for you to cite what you need. I use this frequently!!! No one ever has to know that you didn't read the book in its entirety.
Google Scholar is also a searchable database of articles. I never even heard of it until my senior year of undergrad. If this is news to you too well... here: https://scholar.google.com/
Sage Journals does have limits, but there are some open source, i.e. free access sources on their site (scroll to the bottom of their home page for more info on this): https://journals.sagepub.com/
http://Academia.edu offers free and paid membership options. And then people who share their work there decide if they want theirs behind the paywall or free. There's a lot you can get for free.
Follow @JSTOR_Daily to see links to a wide variety of open source articles they provide. You can also join their email list to get links and summaries of articles sent to you. Maybe create a folder in your email to save them. http://daily.jstor.org/newsletter
Make sure you are following Twitter or other social media pages for scholars, organizations, etc. in your chosen field. Often they share things you can access for research.
CHECK IN WITH CLASSMATES. Often they have already downloaded/saved or scanned something that you need. It never hurts to ask! You can also ask many of your professors if they have something specific if you have figured out what you need or if they have anything they recommend.
Borrow and lend books if/when you feel you can with classmates. I lent a whole bag of books to a friend/classmate for one of her papers this past semester. Some of us have good libraries at home.
When you are able, do search for used copies of books that you think are worth owning and/or investments that you will reference in ongoing work (i.e. not just one paper.)
Consider book trades also! Check in with folks who are graduating and may want to off-load books & get a little cash back. Check in with alumni you know. Don't feel bad to ask on FB if any of your friends have a book, pdf, or access to a journal & are willing to download & send.
Do make use of whatever databases your uni does offer. You may not be familiar with what all they offer, but usually you can go to your library's website to find this out. If you haven't done it before, everything going virtual makes it essential now.
