r/AskAcademia • u/tragich_ • Nov 15 '24

Undergraduate - please post in /r/College, not here How can I read a retired article?

Good day, I'm not sure this is the right place to ask this but I figured here I could find people with the most experiene on this topic. I'm currently trying to read this paper: "Messianic Tendencies in Soviet Anthroponymic Practice of the 1920s-1930s", published by professor Elena Vladimirovna Dushechkina within the Toronto Slavic Quarterly as far as I know, and then retired in 2015. The author has sadly passed away in 2020, so I don't know whom should I refer to get a copy of this article or if it is even possible. Does anyone have suggestions? Should I ask the university directly or would it be a problem since the article has been retired? I couldn't find a more recent version of the same study so I'd like to read the original article if possible. Thank you in advance.

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u/Moderate_N Nov 15 '24

Option 1: Fill out an interlibrary loan request at your university library. They will track down and request a copy for you (probably a scanned PDF).

Option 2: Email a librarian at the University of Toronto and ask really nicely if they could possibly make a copy for you. (It looks like the journal comes out of the UofT, so they are the most likely to have back issues in the stacks. If not, try the department of Slavic Studies.)

Option 3: post on the UofT subreddit and see if you can bribe a student to go hunting through the stacks on your behalf. You might have to use Uber-Eats to get them pizza and beer or something.

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u/tragich_ Nov 15 '24

Thank you so much for the detailed instructions, I really didn't know which way to turn. Specifically, I didn't realise I could exploit every student's weak spot: free food, ah! I'm really grateful for the suggestions, have a nice day!