Distance Education

Like all academic libraries, the University of Iowa Libraries buys access to online journals, research databases and other collections of online articles (and other content). Often, the subscriptions we pay are based on the number of students who will have access and we need to ensure that only our students/staff/faculty have access to the articles. The providers of online articles know that any computer coming from our range of internet (IP) addresses is on the UIowa campus and should have access. Off-campus, though, isn’t so easy.

All our links to something we pay for go through a proxy server – sort of a gate-keeper that asks your HawkID and password and then lets anyone who should have access through to the resource. That only works if you start somewhere on the University of Iowa Libraries websites (http://www.lib.uiowa.edu) though. If you google the journal article and find it on a publisher website, for example, or follow a link to an article from someone else’s website, no one will know you’re part of the UIowa and they’ll probably want some money up front.

Here are some strategies to help.

• Start your research at the library – http://www.lib.uiowa.edu.
• Configure Google Scholar’s Library Links to use the University of Iowa – http://scholar.google.com/scholar_preferences or just log into Google Scholar through us. 
• Use the Article Locator to find out if we have articles someone else is linking to.

Share your secrets for getting library materials in the comments.

Dan the Librarian

I’ve had a few questions lately from students who are unsure about plagiarism and want to know “the rules” to avoid it. The rules change slightly from college to college and the Center for Teaching’s FAQ has links to each college’s policies. The UIOWA libraries’ What you should know about electronic resources (pdf) provides some general guidelines and defines plagiarism as,

“…presenting the ideas or words of another without crediting the source.”

More useful, I think, is a philosophy to help you decide when and how to give credit for other people’s ideas. Regardless of the intricacies of APA or other citation styles, let your readers know which ideas are yours and which come from another source. The style guides merely give you a framework for that. There is no shame in using someone else’s ideas – the shame is in claiming those ideas are your own.

• As you write your paper and set down your ideas, keep in mind where your support comes from.
• Every time you use an idea from someone else, whether you are quoting directly or expressing that thought in your own words, mention who or where the thought came from.
• Every time you mention someone else’s though, follow the guidelines of whatever citation style you are using to direct your readers to that original thought.

Do you know what plagiarism is ? How have you handled gray areas in using other people’s thought?

Let us know in the comments.

Dan the Librarian

On a practical level, most of you probably don’t think about the library as long as we provide the resources and services you need efficiently. You trust us to do our jobs well and we try to meet and exceed your expectations. That is as it should be, but you should know that we have some guidance and are not just making this up as we go along.

At the 2008 American Library Association convention the Association of College & Research Libraries approved the updated Standards for Distance Learning Library Services. The important part, as far as I’m concerned, is in the first paragraph – “Academic libraries must, therefore, meet the information and research needs of all these constituents, wherever they may be.”

The Standards are a useful baseline and I believe that the University of Iowa Libraries meets them. However, whether the Standards say so or not, we’re going to continue to provide the best service we can tailored to the needs of the students who use us – “…wherever they may be.”

Within the limits of copyright law and understanding that we won’t write your research paper for you, are we meeting your needs? Is there something we can do better?

Let me know in the comments.

Dan the Librarian

At first glance, it seems that electronic books would be a wonderful and convenient resource for distance ed students – if the book you want is available electronically. Here are some advantages and disadvantages of electronic books and a strategy to help you use them most effectively.

Advantages:

• No shipping – e-books, being electronic, are available immediately online.
• Searchable – even if the e-book reader software does not include a search function, you can still use your browser or .pdf reader software to search the text.
• Accessibility for disabilities – electronic book text can be run through screen-readers or changed to make it more readable.
• Portable – You can get your ebook pretty much anywhere, you don’t need a library to house it.

Disadvantages

• Only available online – Some of our ebooks can not be downloaded, so you have to be online to read them.
• It’s hard to read text on a screen – This may be more personal preference than anything else, but I find it harder to read big blocks of text on a computer monitor than I do on paper.
• Not very portable – You need a computer or some other device to read it and can’t just pull that book out of your bag when you have 15 minutes.

So, how can you, as a distance ed student, take best advantage of these things?

First, don’t look specifically for ebooks. Think less about the format of the book and more about the content that will be most helpful. Search the library catalog for books on your topic and take the best ones, whether they are ebooks or not.

Here are some other ideas

• Get familiar with how the ebook system you’re using works. Many ebooks, but not all, come as .pdf files you read using the Adobe Acrobat reader you are likely already familiar with.
• Learn to search the ebook. Tables of contents and indexes are useful, but one major advantage of ebooks is that you can use the computer to sift through them for just what you want rather than you skimming the pages directly. Take advantage of that.
• Use InfoHawk to find ebooks. We buy many collections of ebooks like Books 24/7, Cognet or netLibrary. All the individual ebook titles are listed in our library catalog, though. Use the Advanced Search and change the Format menu to “E-Books” to find only ebooks on your topic.

Let us know what you think. Do you prefer print or electronic books? What other advantages or disadvantages do you see?

Dan the Librarian

Online articles are awfully convenient and certainly a timesaver for distance students, but finding online articles is not always as straightforward as we would like. That’s why the University of Iowa’s InfoLink system is so useful.

Each copyright holder needs to grant permission for different databases or providers to make their article available online and there is no single source that covers all online articles. If you search a database like Academic Search Elite for articles on a topic, you’ll find citations to articles on your topic. Some of those citations will have obvious links to online versions of their articles and some will not.

Each University of Iowa database – Academic Search Elite, ERIC, ABI-Inform, Social Work Abstracts, any of the others – is connected to the InfoLink system and will have a small yellow InfoLink button by the citation for each article. If you click the InfoLink button, a separate window will open up and either tell you that the article is not available online or give you links to where the online article is available -whether it’s in the database you searched or not.

If the article is available online, you’ll see one or more links to different sources. Each provider of online articles does things a little differently, so clicking the links might take you right to the article or might take you to a page for that journal where you’ll need to choose the volume and issue for the article you want.

If your article is NOT available online, InfoLink will give you a link to the Article Request form. Use that to ask for a copy. We will first see if it is on our shelves in print and send a scanned copy to you electronically. If the article you want is not on our shelves, we’ll automatically request a copy from another library through InterLibrary Loan and deliver a scanned copy to you electronically.

With InfoLink, you don’t need to worry about where or how the article is available, you just need to know that you want it.

It is not a perfect system, but it can save you a lot of time and make those articles that are available online a lot easier to find. If you have any trouble finding articles or linking to online articles, contact me.

Dan the Librarian

A student sent in this great question, which is so obvious I’m sorry I didn’t think to put something on the blog already.

Hello there,

I want to research portable classrooms. I am interested in severe weather risks to children in portable classrooms vs conventionally built classrooms, terrorist/shooter risks, exposure to noxious chemicals from the building materials/molds of portable classrooms, effect on learning and test scores of portable classrooms, etc. What database(s) would you recommend I use?

Thank you.

The University of Iowa buys access to to several hundred databases and electronic resources in different areas. It can be pretty overwhelming to figure out where to start. Here are some suggestions.

• Ask a Librarian: This student did a smart thing asking for help. In this case, I would recommend the ERIC database, which covers journals in the field of education, and suggest using ERIC’s subject heading “Mobile Classrooms” to find articles about portable or temporary classrooms and combining that with subject headings like Hazardous Materials or Environmental Standards or School Safety or Weapons or Health Conditions or Academic Achievement, etc, depending on which aspect of the topic the student wants to focus on.
• Use the Resources by Subject pages: Rather than look through all of the databases we have available, let our Resources by Subject list guide you to the best resources in your area. The Education resource page lists ERIC along with several other education resources and describes them briefly so you’ll have a better idea about which to use first.
• Use SmartSearch: The Find Articles section of our Smart Search will let you search multiple databases at the same time. Unfortunately, it is sometimes difficult to narrow your search down effectively while searching many resources at once, but you can do a simple search in SmartSearch to see which database covers your topic best and then do a better search in that database alone to narrow down to a reasonable list of good articles you can actually use.

There are lots of ways to figure out where to search in your area. Share your favorite databases and search strategies in the comments.

Dan the Librarian

Students (and instructors) frequently call me for help finding a specific article they already know about. Often they mean, “How do I find this article online?” whther the article is online or not. Let me give you some stps to follow.

1. Try the Article Locator in the e-journals part of our webpage.

The Article Locator will only look for articles in online journals, so it won’t tell you if we have your article in print.

2. Request the article using Article Delivery

If we have the article you want in our print collection, we’ll scan it for you and deliver it electronically through the Article Deliver/InterLibrary Loan system. If the article you want is not in our collection, we will automatically try to get it for you from another library and deliver it through the system. Register with article delivery now to save time later.

Registering for Article Delivery (video)

Requesting Article Delivery (video)

3. If having the article delivered to you is not efficient enough, see if it is in a library near you.

Look up the name of the journal (not the specific article) in WorldCat.org and find the library nearest you that carries that journal. It’s always a good idea to call the library to make sure they really have what you need before you travel there.

4. You can always Ask a Librarian!

Distance Education students can contact Dan the Librarian through the Get Help page and any University of Iowa student can use out Ask a Librarian pages.

Have you had trouble finding the articles you need or found other strategies for getting what you need from a distance? Tell us about it in the comments.

Dan the Librarian

One of the big problems for students taking self-paced, online or GIS courses is how to take an exam when their class never meets. I get this question a lot and I don’t have any direct help I can give. Let me make a couple suggestions.

1. Ask your instructor Your instructor may have made some arrangements for taking the exam or set out some guidelines for finding a proctor to monitor your exam.
2. GIS classes through the Center for Credit Programs Exam information for GIS classes is available at http://continuetolearn.uiowa.edu/ccp/gis/courses/examinfo.htm.
3. Semester classes through the Center for Credit Programs For semester long online classes, exams are administered online through ICON. More information is available at http://www.continuetolearn.uiowa.edu/ccp/de/examinfo/webexams.htm.
4. Are you taking distance classes from another institution? The Center for Credit Programs testing center may be able to help you out. Contact them at de-exams@uiowa.edu.

.

Have you needed to find a proctor for a test? Tell us what worked for you in the comments.

Dan the Librarian

A student called a few weeks ago, frustrated that her local public library didn’t have a journal her instructor recommended. She’d always been able to get what she needed from her local library before. So, what is the advantage of using the University of Iowa Libraries when your local library is just down the street?

First, let me give some disclaimers, and then give you some criteria to help you decide for yourselves. I started my library career in a public library and have worked in several public libraries. All libraries try to provide the best resources they can for their set of users and most libraries will try very hard to get you what you need. I encourage you to use (and support) your local public library, but you should also know when an academic library will be better for you.

• Collections: All libraries subscribe to journals and databases and buy books and other resources to meet the needs of their communities. For a public library, that’s everyone in the community including kids, folks looking for cookbooks or light reading, etc. For a university library, that means buying books, database and journals that support the programs taught there. You are more likely to find academic journals here than at your local public library.
• Services: All reference librarians get asked for information about things they don’t know about every day – that is one of the fun parts of the job and the trick is knowing where to look for the answers. In a university library, we develop expertise in different subject areas and can ask for help from subject specialists. When I’m asked about a medical topic, I can first use the resources of the Hardin Library for the Health Services and, if needed, I can call for help from one of the medical librarians there. Those subject experts know more about medical topics, can probably understand the question better than I can and will be able to guide the user to what they need faster.
• Getting articles: More publishers are more often granting copyright permission to put articles online and our InfoLink system makes it relatively easy to find out if an article is available online anywhere and our article delivery service lets us deliver articles electronically even if they are not online. Really, it comes down to which library subscribes to the databases and journals you need.
• Getting Books: It is likely that your local public library does not have the specific research books you need. If we have the book, the University of Iowa Libraries can send it out to you. If we don’t have the book, it is better for you to request it through your local public library. See this post about book delivery for more information.
• Books for fun: You will almost certainly find a better selection of fun books at your local public library.
• Study space: You are closer to your local public library, it probably has nice couches and tables for studying, it might have a nice coffeeshop and the folks who work there are almost certainly very cool and helpful people.

Are your local libraries useful? Have you found ways to make them work for you? Share your views in the comments.

Dan the Librarian

If you are like most distance education students, you chose a distance education program for the convenience. Driving to Iowa City to use the library is not a convenient option. In the next couple of paragraphs, I’ll outline some strategies for getting books for your academic research.

Which book?
First, use the Libraries online catalog to find books on your subject or to find your specific title.

Getting a book from the University of Iowa Libraries
When you find a book you want, use the Interlibrary Loan & Article Delivery Request Form to request it. (Don’t let the name scare you – we use the system for books, too.)

The first time you log in to the system, you’ll be asked to create an account – a pretty straightforward process. If you are a distance education student, remember to choose the Distance Education option whenever it is available. This short video explains how in more detail.

To request a book…

1. Log into the system.
2. Choose the book request form from the list on the left.
3. Fill out as much information as you can – the form indicates what basic information is required, but the more information might help us find your book faster.
4. Submit your request.
5. We’ll ship the books to you, usually by UPS. You are responsible for sending the books back to us. Use this chart to find out how long you can keep books.

Getting books we don’t own
We can even get books for you from other libraries – although that is not always the best option for distance ed students. When you request a book, we’ll first check our collection for it. If we don’t have it, we’ll automatically request it for you from another library. That’s right – you just request what you want and we’ll get it for you whether we own it or not.

Of course, it takes longer for us to request a book from another library, have them send it to Iowa City and then have us turn around and send it on to you.

Finding a Book in your area
How can a distance ed student get a book from another library, then? This is one of the few times I’ll recommend your local public library. They also provide Interlibrary loan services and might be able to save time by getting the book more locally. Use the WorldCat system to see if the book is available in a library near you.

How do you get the books you need for your research. Tell us about it in the comments.