Research from Home
by Johlene Hess, co-editor and Library Assistant

It’s snowing, a real blizzard outside.  The roads are covered in snow and I can’t get out of my driveway.   Great opportunity to drink hot chocolate and work on my history paper.  All that wonderful information at Carrier Library, citations and  full-text online, and I’m snowed in.  How can I access the databases available in Carrier Library?   

Actually, it is not very difficult.  The instructions for “Accessing Databases from Off-Campus” (/proxy/) appear on all of the research database web pages.  

1.  You need to be a currently enrolled JMU student, faculty member  or staff.  Your JMU electronic ID account must be activated . There is a quick test  for your electronic id available from “Problems Connecting to Databases from Off-Campus” web page (/databases/faq.html)

 2.  You must make a small, one-time modification to your web browser to use the proxy server.  The instructions are available from the “Accessing Databases from Off-Campus” web page (/proxy/).  

3.  You must access the databases from the “Research Databases” pages (/databases/)  from Carrier Library web site.  This allows the proxy server to ask you for your JMU electronic id and password, it verifies you are a student.