Did you know?

Do you know how Interlibrary Loan (ILL) works?

This post will give you a brief play by play on what happens and how it works

Here's what you, the user does:

• You find a citation.
• Check the citation in the library catalog to see if we subscribe to it in print or check Online Journals to see if we have it in another database.
• If not, you head to the ILL page (or use the prepopulated ILL forms in the EBSCO or Wilson databases) to make your request.
  
• That's it for you! What you've done is found the citation, checked the library catalog, and checked online journals. You then made your request with the citation information and your information.
  

What happens next:

• Interlibrary Loan staff receive and review your request. We make sure that we have all of the information that we need to process your request.
• Our ILL staff then check to see who has the book or article and are they in one of the groups that we belong too. Why can't we just get it from a library that you found that has it? Well we may not belong to the same group or they don't have that exact issue. Or they want to charge us too much money. Why is this important? Because we don't want to have to pass on the cost of ILL onto you.
  
• We then choose a grouping of libraries that has the material that you requested.
  
• Then its up to these libraries that we've asked to borrow from. That's why it takes a while for your books and articles to come. We have to wait just like you for the materials to arrive. We have no control over the time it takes a lending library to get us the articles or books.
  
• Once we receive your item(s) we will notify you that it is ready for pickup.

That's the basics of how ILL works. If you have any questions during these steps make sure to get in touch with one of the reference librarians.

Movies, TV, and more online--for free!

Have you ever missed an episode of you favorite TV show? Don't feel like paying iTunes $2.00 to watch it? Well fear no more! If you're not already familiar with it, check out Hulu.com a collaboration between NBC, Fox, and other networks, you can find some of your favorite shows online and watch the episodes that you missed! Wanting to watch a show from CBS? Check out TV.com or CBS.com for your favorite TV shows.

Interested in some classic movies such as Ghostbusters? Well guess what, Hulu has that and other movies as well. So if you need entertainment and the library and movie stores are closed, check out these sites online!

New JSTOR e-Journal Collection

Mercer University Libraries have added a new JSTOR online journal collection to our repertoire. The Health & General Sciences collection is now available to all Mercer campuses and access to these additional journals has been integrated into the familiar JSTOR interface. A title list is available at http://www.jstor.org/about/gs_content.html

Library of Congress on Flickr!

One of the worlds largest libraries has decided to partner up with Flickr to share some of its treasures with the rest of the world.

Browse photos in this collection that is a collaboration between the Library of Congress and the online photo management and sharing application Flickr. Users are invited to view photos and help describe the photos by adding tags and comments. Free account required to comment or tag photos. Initial photo sets include "1930s-40s in Color" (with photos from the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information) and "News in the 1910s."

Librarians Internet Index week of January 28, 2008

Why should you know about this? Because you no longer have to travel to Washington, DC to see images related to the history of the United States. It's a unique partnership that will hopefully open doors for other institutions to share their treasures with the rest of us.

EBSCO Databases Back

Access to all EBSCO databases has been restored.

EBSCO Databases Down

All EBSCO databases are currently inaccessible. The vendor has been notified and is working to rectify the outage. We will post again to this blog to let you know when access has been restored. Other Mercer databases should be functioning as normal.

Did you know?

Did you know that the library gets new books in almost every week? The library is always acquiring new materials from books to movies to expanding our coverage in our databases. Some of these books make it to the new book shelf, others however make there way up to the stacks first. So how can you tell what's new? You can take a look at this page to see some of the different areas new materials are arriving in.

You can also suggest new materials that the library should purchase on this page or through any of the staff.

Please remember that bearDVD's you need to contact the Student Government Association on.