University Library

After you are officially enrolled in a course, you will be able to use your University ID card (i-card) to access the University Library. The library has created a Guide for Distance Learners to help you navigate and find useful resources in the library. Here are some links to help you get started:

  • Search eBooks: The University Library offers numerous eBook titles in areas of business, law, art, and engineering for students to benefit from. Use this “How-to” guide for an Easy Search of these eBooks.
  • I-Share Books (for distant learners): If you live in or near Illinois, you may have access to an I-Share Member Library. If so, you can borrow items onsite or order books and have them sent to that library free of charge.
  • Business Information Services: Gies College of Business has a dedicated team at the Digital Research Library (DRL). They provide a portal to all business-specific resources available through the University library. Watch this playlist on Conducting Business Research and review this flowchart developed by the DRL.
  • IBIS World: This is a comprehensive collection of market research on different industries used to help students with their case assignments and group projects.
  • Interlibrary Loan & Document Delivery: This is a resource for obtaining materials not available in the Illinois Library System.
  • Safari Books Online: Premier on-demand digital library providing over 40,000 technology, digital media, business books, and videos.
  • LinkedIn Learning: You have free access to the entire LinkedIn Learning’s online training tutorial library as a University of Illinois student. It contains over 1,200 courses and 73,000 tutorials organized by subject, software, and instructor.
  • “Ask a Librarian”: Live chat with a librarian to seek help.

Click here for general instructions on how to use library resources at the University.

Accessing the Library Off-Campus

Connecting from off campus doesn’t work as seamlessly as on campus because the databases aren’t able to recognize that you are an affiliated user at the University of Illinois. In order to access the library from off campus, you can use the following methods:

Connect through the Library Website (Preferred Method)

Connect to your resource via Easy Search or one of our many Search Tools. These paths will send you through the “proxy server” and prompt you to log in with your NetID and password.

VPN (Virtual Private Network)

Installing a VPN client will allow you to securely connect to databases from any off-campus location by routing your activity through the campus network. Once connected, this will let you operate in the same way you would if you were on campus. This method is especially useful if you’re using a lot of different resources, browser bookmarks, or links you find outside of the library domain (e.g., Google or Google Scholar). See VPN for installation instructions.

Proxy Bookmarklet Add-on for Web Browsers

If you find yourself on a subscription-based resource that doesn’t recognize you to be affiliated with the University and prompts you to pay for the article, you can click the proxy bookmarklet, which will then prompt you to log in as a University of Illinois user and then reload the page giving you full access. See Proxy Bookmarklet for installation instructions.

Manually Add Proxy String to URL

This option allows you to manually do what the proxy bookmarklet does for you automatically, just by editing your URL. This can be especially useful if you want to share a link to an electronic resource with other people (e.g., on a syllabus or course site). Note: If the electronic resource provides a “stable URL” or “permalink,” use this as your base URL instead of the address shown in your browser’s address bar.

Configure Google Scholar

Add “UIUC Discover Full Text” links for quick access to more full text articles. See Google Scholar Configuration for instructions.

For more information, please visit Access Database.