Interlibrary Loan

March Madness at Snell!

March Madness: Helpful Hints for a Successful Semester Spring break has come and gone and now students are gearing up for their own March Madness—that final stretch of the semester when the weeks race by and then, BAM, papers are due and final exams have arrived. Ready or not, it’s time to start getting research together for whatever projects you may have and Snell Library is here to help you find what you need. Check out the hints below to learn how Snell can help you get the wheels in motion: Ask a Librarian! Seriously—they know their stuff about digging up the research you need and not to brag, but I think our staff here at Snell is pretty exceptional. And really easy to get in touch with! You can meet them at the reference desk on the library’s second floor or you can email, text, and chat with librarians online. Group projects. Love ’em or hate ’em, they’re a fact of life for many students. The first floor (especially the Cyber Café) is a great place to meet up and divvy up assignments. You can also book a group study room right on the library website. Finding Books and Articles. Sometimes that obscure book about realist perspective on the development of the dessert banana just isn’t available here on campus. Fortunately, interlibrary loan can help you get the things you need. You can also apply for a Boston Library Consortium card if you want to go raid BU’s bookshelves yourself. But remember, the card takes up to a day to process and it can take a little time for an article to be scanned and uploaded for you from another library. Start thinking about the research you need now so you can bang out that paper come April. Collecting citations. Creating a bibliography has never been easier. Northeastern provides a subscription to EndNote (ideal for grad students) and Refworks.com (perfect for undergraduates and researchers looking to share sources). Check out this post by Amanda to get started. Wireless Printing. You’ve burned the midnight oil, your paper is done, and you’re ready to print. Thanks to new software that you can download from myneu.com, you can send documents straight to the library’s printers from your own laptop. This can be especially helpful when you’re printing out a paper five minutes before it’s due. Not that any of us students do that… Phew! Well, I hope this list helps you out. Take it easy on those late night cups of coffee and stay tuned to Snippets for more hints on how to take advantage of everything our libraries have to offer. Good luck with the rest of your spring semester!

InterLibrary Loan: A Memoir

So my favorite easy read author is Harlan Coben. He comes out with a few books every year and they’re fast paced mysteries that I find extremely easy to breeze through in just a few days. Given that he only comes out with one or two a year in hard cover it’s difficult to read them all right away. This is why I would like to give a big thanks to Northeastern Universities Inter-Library Loan. When I first decided to check if he had released a new book, NUcat helped me out and found that the only copy of his new novel was at the Wellesley College Library. Under the advice of the librarian assisting me, I put a request through ILL in about 30 seconds and the book left my mind. Two days later as I’m leaving for the weekend and looking for a read on the bus, I get To Kill a Mockingbird. I figured I’d give it a second go since it’s been a few years, and the guy working the desk says my book is in! Two days. Literally it arrived before I even remembered ordering it. And to top it off, the book is great! I just started it a day ago and I’m already 200 pages in. Thanks Inter-Library Loan!! I will definitely be using this service again!

When you need something from another library

worldcat_textside_120You’re probably already familiar with the interlibrary loan system: Snell Library doesn’t have a book (or video or cd) that you want, so you order it, and we get it for you from another library. An email tells you when it arrives at Snell, you pick it up, take it home, and return it to Snell when you’re done. Beginning today, Northeastern and the member libraries of the Boston Library Consortium offer you a new way to quickly search all our catalogs at once, and easily make interlibrary loan requests for the books and audiovisual items you need. Called “WorldCat Local” , this web-based mega-catalog searches across the Boston Library Consortium and beyond, and uses your myNEU login for placing orders. Of course, not everything you see in WorldCat Local can be ordered; you’ll still have to visit the member libraries in person for things like rare and archival materials, reference encyclopedias, and journals. But with WorldCat Local, it’s a snap to see exactly which library has what you need before you make the trek, and the ILLiad and Nexpress systems remain available for ordering individual article pdf’s. To try WCL, go to http://northeastern.worldcat.org or look for the link in Nucat or on our “Borrowing from other libraries” pages.  WorldCat Local is available to any member of the public for searching. Current NU faculty, staff and students with myNEU accounts may place orders. Please let us know what you think of WorldCat Local!