In college, you need to read a lot of academic literature when writing each seminar paper. Charles University libraries offer not only traditional printed books, journals and university textbooks, but also a number of electronic resources (scientific articles, e-books, thematic databases, encyclopedias or multimedia) that are available online whether you are on-site at the university campus, home or even in a café. Let’s learn where to find them and how to work with them.
UKAŽ – everything in one place
After the summer break (we start in September 2021) you can look forward to the brand new central search engine UKAŽ (ukaz.cuni.cz/en), where you will find both printed books and journals from the collections of Charles University libraries, as well as electronic journals, e-books, articles, theses, news, music, conference papers and other academic materials available at Charles University. UKAŽ also allows direct management of the user account – tracking and renewing loans, entering requests (item reservations), exporting citations, saving found records for later and other useful and interesting functions. Everything is in one place – just fill out the e-application and become a registered user of CU libraries.
Are you more interested in specific subject databases available online (so-called electronic resources, e-resources or ER)? Then you will surely like CU eResources Portal (eresources.cuni.cz), where you will find an overview of all currently available databases. You can easily list them all alphabetically or filter them using a specific subject or faculty availability.
Don’t forget that most e-resources can be accessed remotely (e.g. from your home) via UKAŽ and the Portal, all you need is a valid password to CAS – Charles University Central Authentication Service.
“Find It” button in databases
If you come across an icon or link with the text “Find It” anywhere, you can safely click on it. This service will find out if it is possible to access the full text 
of the article or e-book. After clicking on the icon, a list of links will appear which you can use to open the document.
If the text is not available to CU, a link to the list of CU libraries will be displayed. Choose yours and let them know that you are interested in that particular document. The library might buy it for their collection or get it for you by borrowing it from another library in the Czech Republic or even abroad.
How to register to CU libraries?
In order to be able to use all the services of the Charles University libraries and operate your user account, it is necessary to register online in advance. Registration to all CU libraries takes place uniformly by filling in the e-application.
To register, you first need to have one of the CU cards issued to you. After that, you can log in using your CAS credentials – your personal number, which is on your CU card under the photo, and your valid CAS password.
You can also follow news from the world of electronic resources (ER) on Facebook. Don’t forget to also follow the pages of your faculty library, where you will find the most up-to-date information relevant to your faculty.
