Students prefer to find articles that are available full text in various databases because this saves the time of locating the information in the Library should the Library own the source. However, too often students limit themselves by using only full text articles, rather them articles available in the Library that are more relevant to their topic.

When an article is available in fulltext, it will generally be available in one of two formats -- html or pdf.

HTML files are accessible using your standard Internet browser and generally look similar to web pages. They can also be printed using the printed from your browser and be saved or e-mailed from the database to another computer. However, it is important to note that html documents generally contain only the text of the article, not pictures, charts, graphs, illustrations, etc. For example, look at the search result below. The photograph that appeared in the original article is not available in html format.