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The following information is provided to answer some of the most frequently asked library questions of PSU teaching faculty.
Requesting Library Materials for Purchase
The Library strongly encourages teaching faculty to make recommendations for adding materials to our collections that support teaching and student research in their classes and disciplines. We provide each teaching department with a library faculty liaison to whom you can channel requests for material purchases or any other inquiries about departmental library needs. Requests for books or other media can be made at anytime to your library liaison via a simple e-mail, note, marked publisher’s flyer, or bibliography list. There’s no need to check our holdings before hand. Requests for items costing $400 or more, or for online resources, are discussed and evaluated by the library faculty as a whole, but routine book requests are processed automatically.
Requests for adding journal subscriptions are also subject to a review and evaluation process by the library faculty. This is done to consider issues such as current online availability, research value to specific courses and programs, cost, and ready access to indexing and abstracting. Please contact your subject liaison for advice in requesting a journal.
Course Reserves
Faculty members may place any library materials or personal copies of items on reserve for their classes. Physical reserve materials may include books, reports, scores, audio or video recordings, DVD’s, etc. You may designate a Reserve loan period for one hour, two hours, one day, three days or seven days. Faculty may also wish to make book chapters and articles not available through our online databases available electronically through Moodle. All reserve material must be in compliance with federal Copyright Laws.
Adding Course Reserve Articles from Library Databases into Moodle
Save time and money! Because the Library is already under contract for these resources, faculty can easily share articles from Library Databases (i.e. JSTOR) via web links in your online Moodle course shell. Follow these instructions or contact your library liaison for assistance. Librarians are happy to assist faculty in finding the best resources that are already available without waiting for copyright clearance or paying additional fees.
Library Instruction
No longer a quaint notion of learning how to search the catalog or the intricacies of the Library of Congress Classification, library instruction is more critical now than ever to help students understand how a state-of-the-art academic library serves as a gateway to a universe of information resources in traditional and online formats, whether located within its walls or on the web. Lamson Librarians have created a multi-tier system of teaching students, from individual consultation at the Reference Desk, to creating print and online research guides, to delivering classroom presentations for individual courses.
A key element is letting us know about your students’ assignments and research projects. We encourage instructors to send a copy of a current assignment to their liaison via campus or e-mail, so we know in advance of what students will be looking for. Or, talk to a librarian at the reference desk (535-2455) about the availability of resources or best strategies for an assignment. Please refer to the Ideal Library Assignment factsheet for more detailed tips on how you can help us most effectively help your students benefit the most from our library’s excellent resources.
A significant part of our instruction program takes place in the First Year Seminar program. In this course we provide detailed library orientation via an online Introduction to Lamson Library & Learning Commons, and classroom instruction to each First Year Seminar section covering basic resources and research strategies built around the topics central to each of the seminar “Questions”.
If you would like to discuss scheduling a classroom presentation by a librarian, contact your subject/department liaison in the library, or call or e-mail Jen Green. To reasonably accommodate other teaching commitments, our daily reference schedule, and other professional responsibilities, we do ask for sufficient lead time when setting up a library instruction session, particularly in the case of a new presentation, where more preparation time is needed. We request that faculty contact us three weeks in advance of the time they would like a class scheduled. It is also important to have several alternative dates, since we are increasingly sharing the use of our primary Library Instruction classroom with others, and want to make sure we can schedule you at your optimum time. We also require that the course instructor be present for the Library Instruction session. We think it reinforces the value and importance of the session to the students, and makes sure that the instructor receives the same information as the students.
We do welcome faculty bringing their classes on their own to the library for independent research, but request that you notify the librarian at the Reference Desk in advance, so that we know there are no conflicting groups or activities at that time that would interfere with your students’ unhampered and efficient access to resources or assistance.
Online Resources
For your own research, as well as that of your students, the Library subscribes to over 70 periodical databases covering all key disciplines. From the Databases link under the Collections menu on the Library website, you will see an alphabetical list of all online databases the Library subscribes, most of which are periodical databases. Almost all of these databases offer partial or comprehensive full-text access as well. When you are off-campus, remember to log on via the my.plymouth portal, so that you have unimpeded access to all our subscription databases.
Note also that under the heading Collections we offer Resources by Subject. This will allow users a quick and efficient way to view key resources, by specific subject areas.
For access to the largest database of holdings in academic, research, and special libraries in the U.S., including the Library of Congress and several major international libraries, you can connect to WorldCat directly from the Databases list. WorldCat contains millions of records of cataloged books, serials, media, datafiles, websites, music scores, and archival material.
Interlibrary Loan
Any specific book or article from a journal we don’t own (or have online access to) may be requested through the Library’s Interlibrary Loan service on our website. These privileges are available at no cost to all full and part-time students, all PSU faculty, staff, and alumni who have a borrowing card.
These materials can be borrowed through Interlibrary Loan:
Books
Theses & Dissertations
Music scores
Photocopies of individual periodical articles
Many audio or video recordings. Not all libraries are willing to lend AV materials, but the practice is more common now
These materials cannot be borrowed through Interlibrary Loan:
Whole periodical issues
Some audio or video recordings (depending on the lending library’s policy)
Recent newspapers
Reference books
Bulky, fragile, or rare, extremely valuable materials (usually those materials found in “Special Collections” or archival collections)
Interlibrary Loan requests are made online from the Library’s website using the industry-standard ILLiad software. Under the Services menu at the left, click on Interlibrary Loan (ILLiad). If you are a new user, you must register with ILLiad. Follow the instructions on the screen and fill out all the required fields. If you are a returning user, simply log in as usual. Click under “New Request” the type of material you would like to request (i.e. book, journal article). For faster service, it is important to supply complete and accurate bibliographic data for the article or book you are requesting.
It can take anywhere from just one day to 2 weeks for ILL material to arrive. It all depends on the type of material and how far we have to go to locate a library that owns that material. Most ILL material we request is found right here in New Hampshire and thus obtained rather quickly.
ILL Article requests from periodicals are now more often sent to us electronically. Once your request has been processed, you will receive an email from us directing you to login to ILLiad where you may view, save, or print the full text of your article. Electronically received articles are available on ILLiad for 30 days.
ILL Books: If you are requesting a book, you will be notified by mail that you may pick it up at the Information/Help Desk unless you have requested that books be mailed to your campus address. If for some reason we are unable to obtain the item you requested, you will receive a note explaining why.
Because books you request through ILL are owned by other libraries, those libraries set the loan period, which is normally about two weeks. A renewal should be requested only when absolutely necessary, and should be done at least one week in advance of the due date. Return all ILL books to the Information Desk. ILL books may also be recalled by the lending institution, in which case we would need the material returned immediately. Lending libraries also determine any conditions regarding the use of their materials. Limitations such as “No Renewal” or “Library Use Only” must be honored.
For assistance, contact Joyce Bruce in the Interlibrary Loan Office, (535- 2576), or the Reference Librarian (535-2455).
Other Library Questions
For all other questions about specific Library services, resources, or policies, or for suggestions on other helpful information we should include here, please do not hesitate to contact any of our librarians and/or staff.
