Distance Education

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

As part of a follow up to another question, a student asked…

“Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. You have been very helpful. One more. Is there a way to search all of the data bases together for one subject?”

Yes, you can use the Smartsearch, linked from the main library webpage, to search more more than one database at a time - http://smartsearch.uiowa.edu/. Smartsearch is pretty straightforward, but here are some tips to make it easier.

1. Make sure the Find Articles tab is selected.
2. Use the “limit to” feature to select a set of general databases or select one of the subject specific sets such as Health Sciences or Social Work.
3. Perform your search in the basic search field or using the advanced search.
4. Use SmartSearch to find databases that cover your topic, then do a better search in that individual database.

There are some disatvantages to using Smartsearch.

• Since it searches several database at one time, the system can take a while to work.
• Also, we buy access to databases from competing vendors and the Smartsearch system must work with all of them. Each database has it’s own way of working, but the Smartsearch system can’t take advantage of them. In effect, you are often doing the same bad search across many databases.

You can also find Smartsearch pages on many of our Resources by Subject pages - http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/eresources/refsubject.asp.

Have you used SmartSearch? Do you have any strategies that might help this student? Use comments to share your ideas.

Dan the Librarian

Have you found a good way to make the library work for you?

Have you had a problem getting what you need or finding that perfect article?

Use the comments area to share your good and bad experiences, share tips and see what has worked for other distance education students.

To start the blog, I’m copying some questions I’ve recieved by email and my answers to them.

Ask, and answer, questions here!

Dan the Librarian