Find a link to Gale Virtual Reference on the library's homepage. If you are on campus this should open automatically, but if you are off campus you may be prompted to log in through the OpenAthens portal. To do so, you will be asked to enter your student email address and password.
Navigating Gale Virtual Reference Library
1. Use this search bar to do a basic search, or click the dropdown arrow to search by subject, publication, or document. You can also select click the "advanced search" link which will take you to the advanced search page where you can utilize multiple search bars and choose from more search limiters.
2. These tools appear no matter what page you are on in GVRL. "Title List" is an alphabetical list of all titles available. "Search History" allows you to see what you have looked at so far during your session. "Get Link" allows you to create a permalink to the specific page that you are on, which you can share or send to yourself to view later. "Highlights and notes" shows you any highlights or notes you have made in the books you have viewed. While you are using GVRL, this will show you only what you have created during this session; to save highlights and notes for the future, you'll need to create and log into a personal profile.
3. This section displays featured books from each subject area. You can click the arrow at the far right of each section to scroll more books from that subject area, or you can click "view all" to see all books in that subject area.
4. This is an index of all subject areas. You can click a heading to go directly to that collection.
Accessing & Using Gale Virtual Reference Topic Finder
To access the Topic Finder tool in GVRL, from the home page, click on the link to go to the advanced search page, and then click "Topic Finder" in the light gray bar at the top of the page.
To begin, enter your search terms into the search bar, and then Topic Finder will generate this mosaic of subcategories that it has identified in your topic. You can click on one of these subcategories to view search results for that topic. In this instance, I'm going to click on "Greenhouse Gases" (at far left of the mosaic).
When you select a subcategory from your initial search, the Topic Finder will show you many even smaller subcategories within your subject of choice. To the right side of the page, you will see a list of search results. You can click on the blue headings of each to be taken to that eBook.
This tool is most helpful when you are just setting out on your research journey-- it can take a very broad subject and help you select a narrower, more manageable topic, as well as give you a better idea of what topics have plenty of research material to work with as well as which ones are more obscure and may prove more difficult to research.