The USC Libraries extend students' borrowing privileges and remote access to databases and electronic resources for a semester (one academic term) after the last semester of enrollment in courses. We are unable to extend interlibrary-loan eligibility to graduating students, however. For example, if your last classes ended in May, your full student privileges are enabled through the summer period and end on the last day of the summer term.
Past that, alumni privileges are described on the USC Libraries borrowing privileges site. Please click on the alumni tab.
Since we are unable to provide alumni with remote access to USC Libraries' e-resources, the following is a list of freely accessible scholarly electronic resources that we recommend:
- DOAJ - The Directory of Open Access Journals includes freely available peer-reviewed journals on all subjects
- DOAB - The Directory of Open Access Books provides open access to over 854 Academic peer-reviewed books from 25 publishers
- PubMed Central - Full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM). NIH grant recipients are required to deposit their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts in the PubMedCentral archive upon acceptance for publication, with this content to be made publicly accessible within 12 months of publication. (PubMed includes additional citations that aren't full text)
- Sage Open - Communication, Education, Psychology, and other social science journal articles published through Sage.
- USC Digital Library - Includes photographs, images, and other digitized collections. Features over 56,000 USC published theses and dissertations.
- ArXiv.org - Open access to nearly 800,000 e-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance and Statistics, and related fields
- PLoS - High quality megajournal in the area of science, particularly biological sciences
- SSRN - The Social Science Research Network has pre-print and other open access materials from across a broad range of the social sciences including business and economics such as conference papers, journal articles, and book chapters
- ERIC - The Education Resources Information Center is an online library of education research and information, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education featuring reports, articles, and book chapters in the fields of education and counseling
Finally, consider your local library. For example, a Los Angeles Public Library card can provide access to many online references sources, some of which you may have used at USC.
Have questions? As always, feel free to ask a librarian.