UNC Library Bookmarklet

I've created a bookmarklet to help ease access to articles that are located behind publisher paywalls.  If you try to access an article from a publisher's website from on campus, access is usually allowed because your computer is within the unc.edu domain. However, if you are off campus (or if the on-campus detection doesn't work) then the link to the full text article will be blocked by the publisher.

This bookmarklet makes it trivial to quickly search for a blocked article via the UNC Library to access it via the library's proxy. It also comes in handy if you find the title of an article on a radom web page and want to quickly search locate a full text copy.

A prerequisite, of course, is that you are a UNC Affiliate who can login to the UNC Library's system with an onyen.  If not, you're out of luck.  There is nothing magic here, and nothing about this bookmarklet allows you to illegally circumvent paywalls. However, the bookmarklet is easy to edit if you are comfortable with Javascript.  It should be easy to customize to work with your own library system if you are lucky enough to be affiliated with a research library.

Installation

Drag the image below to your bookmark toolbar.  That's it!

UNC Library Bookmarklet

Usage

  1. On any web page, highlight the title of the article/book/etc. you are trying to fine.
  2. While the text is highlighted, click the bookmarklet button on your toolbar (created during installation).
A new tab should open up in your browser showing the results from a UNC Library search with the highlighted title.  Click through to the article and you're ready to go!