Distance Education Blog

ISI Web of Knowledge is a citation database, which means that you can look up an article and find out what other more recent articles have cited it.  It’s a great way to discover newer articles on a topic you’re interested in, and it can also be used to find out how popular the work of individual scholars is in their field.

As of today, OhioLINK’s Electronic Journal Center is fully restored!

WorldCat is a database that shows the holdings of libraries all over the world.  If you live outside of Ohio, it can be a very good way to find out which libraries near you own a particular book you’re looking for.  It is also a good way to find books on very obscure topics that might not be represented in ALICE or the OhioLINK catalog, and to double-check a citation you have for a book if some part of it seems wrong.  Give it a try!

You can always write to me personally about any problems or questions you have, and you can always get live help using our chat and IM services or by calling us on the phone.  But sometimes you’d really like to see a friendly human face.  Did you know that you can do that by using our Skype service?  Skype is a program that lets people communicate, either audio only or with video, over the internet.  Once you’ve downloaded it, if you have a microphone and/or webcam at your computer, you can call us and talk to someone at the reference desk.  The service isn’t completely flawless, but if you’re interested, give it a try!  (You can find a link to our Skype information on our Ask a Librarian page.)

Some of you have probably noticed problems with OhioLINK’s Electronic Journal Center (EJC).  They have had a bad hard disk crash and are working to restore all the content that they had before the crash.  It could take several more weeks before everything is working perfectly again.  In the meantime, you can often find missing journals by clicking on the “link to publisher’s webpage” link under the picture of the journal on its page in the EJC.  That will often take you to a list of journal issues, and you can find the one you need.  If you aren’t able to locate the article you need that way, please fill out an ILLIAD request, and our staff will get the article for you through Document Delivery or Interlibrary Loan as necessary.

This tool is so nifty I like to show it to everybody! If you want to know what’s the closest OhioLINK library to you, try the OhioLINK library locator.

Until recently, the Europa World Yearbook was a large set of extremely heavy books that we kept at the reference desk.  It was very useful for finding out background information and current statistics on the countries of the world, but it was really a pain to drag around.  Now we have access to an online version of these books called Europa World.  It is  available to students at all campuses, so keep it in mind whenever you need information on a particular country.

If you were to come into Alden Library in person, you would see handout racks in many different locations with information on some of our most frequently asked questions.  Just because you can’t come in to the library doesn’t mean you can’t access the same information!  On our Instructional Services page, we have a list of our most popular handouts, all of which are available as PDF files.  And don’t forget to look at our library FAQ!

I want to take some time today to explain Interlibrary Loan (ILL).  This is a system that libraries have developed to send resources from one library to another.  If you need something that you can’t get from normal channels, ILL is always an option for you, and normally we do not charge anything for the service.  If you live in Ohio, your first try to get books should be through the OhioLINK system.  However, if they don’t have the book you need, you’ll need to request it through Interlibrary Loan.  There is no direct requesting of articles through OhioLINK, so if we don’t have access to the article you need, you can go straight to Interlibrary Loan to request it.

To request something through Interlibrary Loan, simply visit our ILL request page.  After logging in (and completing a brief registration process if you haven’t used the system before), you’ll see a page that has links on the left side to different types of resources.  Simply pick the type of resource you’ll be requesting, and you’ll be taken to a form that has all the right types of fields for that specific type of resource.  Fill it in, and your request will go to our staff and they will try to fill it for you.

Some things to keep in mind:

• If you request a book through Interlibrary Loan, you’ll need to be able to come to campus to pick it up.  If you’re too far away to make that practical, you’ll be better off making the ILL request at a public library near you.  Every library has the capability to do Interlibrary Loan; however, some libraries might charge you for the privilege.
• If you request an article, chances are good that it will come to you electronically, so distance is not usually a factor. 
• ILL requests can take time, since we might need to ask several libraries all over the country or world before finding one willing and able to loan the materials for us.  (And then, in the case of physical materials, they actually need to mail them to us.)  For this reason,  ILL works best when you have several weeks to spare before absolutely needing the materials.

I know that there are a lot of new online students starting their studies at Ohio University, and I’d like to take this opportunity to welcome each of you.   Please don’t hesitate to contact me or anyone else here at Alden Library with any questions or concerns you might have.  Even if you never set foot in the building, we are still your library, and we want to serve you as best we can, but we won’t know if you’re having problems or frustrations unless you tell us!  So, in other words, don’t be shy.