Distance Education Blog

I, Marne Grinolds, your faithful distance learning librarian, am back from my summer vacation and trying to decide if I should continue to post to this blog this summer.  My feeling is that distance education knows no seasons, but I’m not entirely sure who my audience is during the summer.  If you would like more good stuff from me for the months of July and August, please let me know, either by posting a comment here or by sending me an email.

June’s featured database is Periodicals Index Online.  While it doesn’t contain full text, PIO is an excellent way to find citations for older articles that can be hard to find online.  Once you have the citation, you can check for an online version through the Find It! link, and if there is none available, you can request a scanned copy of the article through our Document Delivery Service.

Just a reminder that if you live in Ohio, you can pick up your books at any OhioLINK library near you.

You may have seen the link to our library workshop schedule on the front page of our website.  Since you’re off-campus, you probably thought there was no reason to look at it.  Well, I want to encourage you to think again.  We’ve been experimenting with putting the handouts from the workshops online so that even people who couldn’t attend the workshops can find out what was discussed.  (For an example of this, here is the page for my recent newspaper workshop.)  Also, if you want more information about the topic of any of our workshops, please feel free to email the instructor and he or she will be happy to answer your questions!

For the May database of the month, I’ve chosen America’s Newspapers.  We offer many different newspaper databases here, but America’s Newspapers is the one I go to first, because it covers all regions of the country and is very easy to use.  I also like the fact that you can search on so many different scales.  You can search every newspaper it includes, only the major metropolitan newspapers, all the newspapers in a certain state or geographic region, or any particular combination of newspapers you define.  This is definitely one worth checking out!

Did you know that Alden Library has a Frequently Asked Questions page?  Answers to many common questions can be found there.  Also note that if your question isn’t found there, you can send it to us using the “Ask Us a Question” link, and we will add it to the FAQ if we feel it’s appropriate.

When you can’t just come in to the library and get somebody to show you, getting the hang of some of our databases can be tricky.  Fortunately, we have help available for some of them in the form of tutorials.  See the list of what’s currently available on our tutorials page.  We’re adding more as fast as we can make them, so keep checking back every few months.

Did you know that while all the OU campuses share access to many of our library databases, there are some that are only available to students at one particular campus?  This is often because that campus is the only one to offer programs in a specific area.  When looking up a database in Infotree, it will always tell you whether the database is available to all OU institutions or only certain ones.  (Note that there are a few databases that can be used only within the Alden Library building itself, usually due to vendor restrictions.)

If you’re a person who attends classes on more than one campus and are having problems logging into the databases you need because of campus restrictions, please let me know and we will see if we can change which campus the library system defines as your “home campus.”  This also applies to people who take online-only classes, since your home campus can be whichever one makes most sense for you.

You probably know that Alden Library has a course reserves section located at the circulation desk.  However, since you’re distance learners, knowing that probably hasn’t helped you a lot.  I want to make sure that you know that more and more professors are requesting their materials are also put on electronic reserve, with scanned versions of articles and chapters online that you can access from anywhere.

All you need to do is go to our course reserves search and search for your class by course number or instructor’s name.  If you find it, that means there is something on reserve for your class.  On the list of reserve items for that class, some will say “Electronic copy available” in the right column.  If there is an electronic item, all you have to do is click on the title, log in with your name and PID, and you’ll see a PDF of the item.

Along the lines of the OhioLINK Digital Media Center that I highlighted a few weeks ago is their Electronic Book Center.   It contains thousands of scholarly and reference e-books covering the humanities, sciences and social sciences.  Everything in the E-Book Center should also be in our library’s catalog, but if you know you only want e-books, this would be a convenient place to start.  (Also note that OU Libraries have access to many more e-books than OhioLINK does, so if you don’t find what you’re looking for here, check our library catalog as well.)