How to find and print journal articles on UiO-campus

The University of Oslo subscribes to the electronic versions of several scientific journal. This note gives a short guide on how to find, download and print such articles.

NB: In order to acess most of these articles you have to use a computer or terminal on campus, since your IP-number (identifies your computer on the internet) is automatically checked to verify that you have acess according to the subscription applying to the University of Oslo.

What is available

Most journal now provide online services, but the volumes covered varies a lot. Usually the first online verisons are from the late 90s onwards. An important exception is journals covered by the JSTOR which has scanned old printed journals back to very first colume. JSTOR only covers approximately 20 economics journals, but these are very important journals. Note that JSTOR usually does not given access to the most recent volumes.

Finding a journal

I prefer the following procedure:

1. Go to the journal interface in BIBSYS (Norsk, English)
2. Write in the name of the journal (use '?' as a wildcard, e.g. American Economic?)
3. The search result shows the entries for both electronic and printed versions. The 'E' after the number denotes the electronic version. Click on this number.
4. You now see the full entry for the electronic journal.
5. Under 'fulltext' you see a list of the different subscriptions of different libraries. Find 'UHS'.
6. In parentheses after UHS you will see which volumes/years are covered.
7. If the requested year is not covered you have to do it the hard way. That is, you have to go to the libarary and photocopy the article.
8. Click on the service-provider to the left of the appropriate line.
9. You get sent to the website for this journal. The layout differs quite a bit, but you will usually be able to find the volume you are seeking quite easily. Then find the artilce and open the PDF. Then print

Printing PDF-files. Four pages on a sheet

I prefer printing articles with two journalpages on a single page (as if you were to photocopy them/read them in a journal). I also like to use both sides on the paper to economies on paper and making the piles of articles smaller.

Under old verisons of Adobe and with old printer drivers acheiving this was not straightforward. This section is therefore now basically reduntant, but if you for some reason experience problems you can use the following procedure.

So here is my trick:

1. You need Adobe Distiller (which is not free)
2. Choose Distiller as the printer when printing the file. Go through the options until yoiun find the two-up option and choose this. Print. Do not click the print to file option.
3. This makes a new PDF file which has two original pages on each page (the old one will not be deleted). The new file will be located in the path set as default by Distiller. Usually something like '~/Adobe output/'. If prompted for the file name , chose the location yourself.
4. Open the new file. Choose back to your default printer and print this file. If you use a printer with a duplex-unit this will produce 1 new page=2 original pages on each side of the sheet.
5. Put the prinout in your pile of papers.