Hours | Layout | Circulation | Reserves | Interlibrary Loan | Bibliographic Instruction | Ordering Books | Ordering Journals | Online Materials | Copiers | Seminar Rooms | SFX

First of all, the staff. I am Meg Spencer, the Science Librarian. Feel free to come and see me about any concerns or questions you might have about the Library. If you don't stop by Cornell before, there will be an informal tour of the library after the New Faculty Luncheon on August 25th. Terry Heinrichs is the Science Library Coordinator. She is in charge of Circulation, including reserves, so any questions or concerns in these areas should be directed to her. Margaret Brink is Periodicals Assistant, and is in charge of managing our journal collection, placing book orders and dealing with InterLibrary Loan, both TriCollege and non-TriCollege.

Main Floor: Circulation desk, reserves (both General & Honors), Xerox copier (with document feeder), reference section, printed indexes & abstracts, video collection (DVD & VHS), public scanner, public Macs for Tripod & the Web, current print periodicals, seminar room (seats 8).

Ground Floor: Periodical stacks (both open and compact shelving), individual study carrels w/ Macs, Xerox Book-edge copier, seminar room with access to a TV, VCR and DVD player (seats 12-14 comfortably).

Top Floor: Book stacks, public computer room, science fiction corner. This is the designated "quiet floor".

* Wireless access hubs have been installed on the main floor and the upper floor. Ask at the desk for information on how to tap into the wireless network if you want to use your laptop in Cornell.

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One of the first things you will need after you arrive on campus is a bar coded I.D. card. This you will get from Public Safety in the Benjamin West House. Once you have a barcode, we can make up a patron record for you and you will be all set to check out materials from any of the Tri College Libraries.

Monographs: TRIPOD is the online library catalog for Bryn Mawr, Haverford & Swarthmore. As a Swat professor, you have borrowing privileges from all three schools. Faculty due date for books checked from Bryn Mawr, Haverford or Swarthmore is February 15th of the next year (pretty generous, huh?). If you need a book from Bryn Mawr or Haverford, you may request the title directly from TRIPOD. How? If you are searching the WEB version of Tripod: When you bring up the book record on TRIPOD, select the REQUEST button, type in your name and barcode, then select the LOCATION of where you want to pick up the book. Then follow the Web directions. The book should arrive in a day or two and you will be notified by e-mail of its arrival.

Note: If you find a Swarthmore book which has a '+' in the call number, that means it is OVERSIZED, and is kept in the Oversized Section, which is the last range of books upstairs, after 'Z'.

Periodicals: Cornell subscribes to over 700 journals. With so many shifts from paper to online-only, we are now able to display ALL of our remaining current paper subscriptions on the main floor. To see if we subscribe to a journal title, go in to TRIPOD and select "JOURNAL title search". Always check the Holdings information to see what our subscriptions actually cover. On the lower level, the journals are arranged by CALL NUMBER and are split between COMPACT SHELVING and OPEN SHELVING. 1995 is the cutoff date for compact shelving, so any volumes published 1995 and before will be in compact shelving, and anything published after 1995 will be out on the open shelves!

Also, just because Bryn Mawr or Haverford has access to an electronic version of a journal does NOT mean that Swarthmore does! Always look for the Connect to [journal title] from SWARTHMORE message in the Tripod record, to determine whether or not you will be able to get access to an electronic journal from our campus (see InterLibrary Loan information below to find out how to order articles from Bryn Mawr and/or Haverford).

Circulation rules for journals vary with each library. Due to the high price of science journals, circulation of journals at Cornell is not encouraged, but is allowed for faculty (but not students). Bound journals may be kept out for a week, unbound issues for overnight. Since journals are not barcoded at Cornell, check-out is accomplished the old-fashioned way, by filling out a card at the Circulation Desk.

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Space for Reserve materials is severely limited in Cornell, especially behind the Circulation Desk. So please, only put on reserve what is absolutely needed by your classes. If you would like to set up some sort of suggested-reading shelf, we can arrange that on the so-called 'honors' shelves. Reserves are taken care of by Terry, so if you have any questions, feel free to contact her. An e-mail will be coming out with specifics, but for now, here are some Cornell Reserve rules:

* The library does not usually buy textbooks which are required for classes, but sometimes a text will slip through and already be in our collection. Make a habit of checking on Tripod to see if we own a copy of the text you plan to use. If we do have it, let us know and we will put it on non-circulating reserve so it doesn't disappear.

* Please try to bring in your reserve materials during office hours so that we can confirm the course information with you. If you bring reserves over when the office is closed, leave them at the desk with a note including your name, course number and type of reserve.

* All unbound readings, solutions manuals, exams, etc. must be in labeled binders. These binders should be available in your departmental office.

* Copyright permission for xeroxed articles must be obtained before they are put on reserve. This is the responsibility of the department, not the library.

* If you are wondering how many copies to put on reserve, a good rule of thumb is usually one copy for every ten students.

* The earlier you get your reserve materials to us, the faster we can have them processed and made available to the students. An e-mail is sent out in August begging professors to get their reserves to us a week before classes begin. I know that is not always possible, but once classes begin, reserves are put up on a 'first come, first serve' basis.

* There are three types of reserves:

General Reserves: These reserves are kept behind the Circulation Desk. During the day, they must be used in the library. They are checked out for two-hour periods and may be renewed at the end of that period if no one else is waiting for them. They may be checked out overnight after 9 p.m. and must be returned to the library by 9 a.m. the following morning.

General Reserves: (Non-circulating) These reserves are also kept behind the desk, but they do NOT circulate overnight! These are the items which may disappear if they leave the library (or would be difficult to replace if they did disappear), and include such things as textbooks, homework solutions, exams copies, and sometimes professors' personal copies.

Honors Reserves: These reserves are kept out on the low shelves by the front door. While most often used by the smaller seminars as suggested readings, they may also be used as a place to gather larger collections of reserves for which we have no room behind the desk. These items may be checked out and removed from the library any time during the day and are due back the following day. (Honors reserve rules are more relaxed than those for general reserves.)

BlackBoard: If you are interested in putting your reserves up electronically on Blackboard, our course management system please speak to Terry here in Cornell. At this point, students pretty much expect their reserve readings to be available on BB! The library does provide a scanning service for those journals not available online (the online articles can be linked quite easily into your BB course). Reserves on BB involve a bit of advanced planning, since the scanning and cleaning up takes a lot of extra time and effort. You are expected to provide Terry with clean, single sided copies of articles you want put in to your Blackboard course! Terry has sent out separate information about deadlines, etc. for Blackboard. If you haven't had any training yet on Blackboard, the ITS department will be offering an introductory class on August 25th. It can be a little intimidating at first, but once you get comfortable with it, it's not that bad!

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As I mentioned earlier, there are two types of ILL: Tri-College and everywhere else. Tri-College requests go through Cornell, and the others go through the ILL office in the main library (McCabe). There is an ILL web page, containing links to all types of ILL described below:

Tri-College ILL - BOOKS: If you want a book from Bryn Mawr or Haverford, simply press the REQUEST button at the top of the Tripod screen. Enter your name & barcode, and select WHERE you want to pick up the book. Delivery takes approximately one day library to library.

JOURNAL ARTICLES: Journals may not be checked out from TriCo SCIENCE libraries, so if you need a SCIENCE journal article (print OR electronic) from BMC or HAV, place an ILL request using the online article delivery form. Journals DO circulate from main libraries, so if you need an article from a non-science library journal, place a hold on the actual journal volume in Tripod and it will be sent via TriCo van.

Non-TriCollege ILL - BOOKS: For books NOT available in Tripod, try E-Z Borrow , a web gateway which allows simultaneous searching of academic library catalogs in Pennsylvania. Enter the barcode from the back of your ID card and you will be able to search and request books directly from participating libraries within Pennsylvania. You will be notified by e-mail when your book arrives, and you must go to McCabe (the main library) to pick it up. Books ordered from EZBorrow usually arrive within a few days of the request. If books are not available from EZ Borrow, try regular ILL, which can sometimes take up to two weeks to fill.

Non-TriCollege ILL/Document Delivery - JOURNAL ARTICLES: For articles in journals not available from TriCo, first try INGENTA, which is a document delivery system. Ingenta provides access to articles from over 17,000 journals. Articles are delivered electronically to your desktop. Ingenta also includes an e-mail alert service called Reveal TOC Alerts - you can use this service to have Table of Contents of journals sent to your email. Reveal can also alert you to new articles on topics of interest to you. Information on logging in to your Ingenta account will be in your library orientation packet.

If you are unable to get the article you need from Ingenta, use the article delivery request form . You must put the COMPLETE JOURNAL TITLE in your request - do not use abbreviations, or your request will most likely be sent back to you. For complete journal titles, go to Journal Abbreviation Sources.

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Swarthmore professors are allowed to use and borrow from the libraries at University of Pennsylvania, but it involves a bit of preparation. If you plan to borrow from Penn, you must obtain a courtesy card from Van Pelt Library. This must be done during the work week so that the Circulation Staff may verify your current employment by Swarthmore (or you may present them with a letter provided by the Provost each year which verifies yours employment). There is no fee, and check-out period is 28 days. If you just want to use a library at Penn, your Swarthmore I.D. should get you through the door. Swarthmore students may use Penn's libraries, but they have no direct borrowing privileges. Penn is the main school used by Swat professors, but let me know if there are other libraries you might be interested, and I will try to get the scoop for you...

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One of the favorite parts of my job is getting in to the classroom to teach students (& professors) what we have in our libraries and the best way to use what we have. I am finding patrons seem to be embarrassed when they don't know how to find something, or how to use an index, while my feeling is that it is my fault they don't know this stuff!! The best way to reach the most amount of students is by going into a class, and relating what the library has to what they have to accomplish that semester. It also gives me a chance to introduce myself to them, and let them know they are not 'bothering me' if they need to get some information. So feel free to ask me to come into your class and do a Bibliographic Instruction Session if you feel it would be beneficial to you and your students. We can tie it in to a specific assignment, or make it like a "scavenger hunt' sort of game or a Blackboard quiz, and introduce the students to a range of library tools. Come and talk to me if you have some ideas or questions about this. I also will be happy to make up a web page which ties together all of the resources used for your course - the students like the 'one stop shopping' aspect of these pages. The guides for fall are currently being re-designed, but will be available soon.

You are encouraged to order books which you feel would be useful in our collection. If you come across a book you think we should own, please feel free to order it. You may pass the book information on to me, or you may order books yourself using the online book order form which is at our Library's Web Site. For items needed for general use, fill out the book order form .If you need an item for Reserve use, fill out the course information at the bottom of the form! There is a message stating that you should order reserve materials six weeks before the start of term... If you want to see what new items have been purchased for Cornell, I update a new item web page each month.

We aren't doing too much ordering of journals these days, as our journal budget is nearly at its breaking point due to out-of-control price increases. We are investigating other ways of providing everyone with the information faculty need. It's the popular "access vs. ownership " dilemma which is being discussed seemingly nonstop these days in academic library circles. The Ingenta document delivery service should provide you with articles in journals to which we don't subscribe. If there is a journal you wish to order, it must support the curriculum, and must get departmental approval. Once approval is given, the library will try to find the funds to cover the subscription. At this point, a zero-growth journal collection has been mandated by a very tight journal budget, so if a department wishes to order a new journal, they must be prepared to cancel a similarly priced title...

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TRIPOD: This is the online catalog for the libraries of Bryn Mawr, Haverford and Swarthmore. You can look up titles of all books, government documents and journal titles while using Tripod. While in Tripod, you may also access the online catalogs of other institutions such as Penn, Princeton, and Harvard.

CAMBRIDGE SCIENTIFIC ABSTRACTS: An index covering all aspects of Biological Sciences. Also offers access to Medline, Plant Science, and several other databases. Some database coverage goes back to 1982.

MATHSCI: We have access to the Web version of Mathematical Reviews. It goes all the way back to 1940!

ProQuest Research Library - Provides online access to an extensive collection of full-text articles from journals across a wide range of subject areas, including business, education, literature, political science, and psychology. Covers 1971-present.

WEB OF SCIENCE: Swarthmore has access to the Web version of Science Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index. Coverage is back to 1984 (1956 for SSCI) and the Index includes abstracts.

Endnote: We do have a campus license for this citation management tool. The library offers workshops throughout the semester on using Endnote. I have to confess to being totally jinxed when it comes to teaching or using this tool - feel free to ask me questions about it, but I suspect I will usually have to refer you to someone who is NOT Endnote-impaired! There are help pages for Endnote on the library webpage.

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SFX/More! Citation Linking

One of the biggest challenges when doing research these days is making the connection from a citation in an index to the article itself. Swarthmore has implemented SFX, a citation linking software, that should solve this problem. When you are searching in most of our databases, always look for the bright green MORE! button. If we have online access to the article you want, clicking on the MORE! button should take you to it. If we do not have the article online, MORE! will search Tripod to see if the journal exists in print in our collection (not everything is online!!), and if we don't have it at all, it will populate an InterLibrary Loan form. How cool is that??

SEMINAR ROOMS: There are two small classrooms in Cornell which may be used by the Science Departments. If you think holding your class in the library would be beneficial, contact me and I'll let you know if we can accommodate you. Room 110 (on the main floor next to my office) holds 8 - 10 people, and the Sigma Xi Room downstairs holds 10 - 12. We use the Sigma Xi room for both formal & informal Bibliographic Instruction sessions and it has a TV, VCR, DVD player and laser disk player. We have also have a portable projector, so you can bring your laptop (we don't provide one) and project screen images. We do ask that you use the projector during office hours, so it can be safely locked away at the end of the day.

COPIERS: We have two Xerox copiers in Cornell. To use these copiers, you will need to get a departmental card from the staff office on the main floor of Cornell. Each card has $10 worth of copies on it, so if you use it up, let one of the staff members know and we will give you a new card. The cards should be used for the copying of journal articles. You may also give permission to your seminar students to use the card for copying of articles if they are making a presentation in class. The card is to be used only by the presenter, and not by the others in the class who wish to make copies of these articles. We must be notified with a class list if you plan to give copying privileges to your students, and the students must realize they must not abuse this privilege. I depend heavily on the professors to enforce the rules in this matter...

Library Web Address: http://www.swarthmore.edu/library/

Cornell's Web Address: http://www.swarthmore.edu/Library/cornell/cornell.html

Tripod's Web Address: http://tripod.brynmawr.edu/

Send feedback to: mspence1@swarthmore.edu

 Any questions? Please don't hesitate to come and see me. I know this is an overwhelming time of adjustment, so if I can make any of this beginning-of-semester-at-a-new-school transition any easier, great!

Meg

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URL http://www.swarthmore.edu/Library/cornell/new-faculty05.htm
Last updated 24 August 2005 mes