Posted by & filed under Library Resources.

Written By: Janelle Foster

UNT Libraries offer abundant resources and services to further the educational careers of UNT students. But did you know that, as a student of UNT, you can also utilize the collections of hundreds of other libraries? When you can’t access what you need through UNT Libraries, use Interlibrary Loan.

Interlibrary Loan is a service provided free of charge for enrolled students, faculty, and staff. It allows you to check out materials that are not owned or currently available through UNT from other participating libraries. This means that millions of print and electronic items are accessible to you!

A Brief History of Interlibrary Loan

The Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) is a non-profit library cooperative that was founded in 1967. Its primary mission is to “make information more accessible and more useful” (OCLC, 2019). One of the instruments of this mission is the resource-sharing initiative WorldCat, an immense, searchable database comprised of library collections from around the world. Another is the OCLC Interlibrary Loan System, which revolutionized interlibrary loan when it was rolled out in 1979 (Nevins, 1998). While the exchange of materials between libraries was practiced before this date, it was done with far more effort and required extensive searching of other libraries (without a computer) and cumbersome paperwork (with a typewriter) (Nevins, 1998). With the introduction of the OCLC Interlibrary Loan System, the process became automated and has evolved currently into an integrated software that connects libraries on a global scale. Request submittal, item verification, locating potential lenders, and item retrieval all now function within a streamlined, electronic system that library patrons themselves can initiate with ease (Nevins, 1998) Read more

Posted by & filed under Research Help.

Written By: Oluwaseyitan Awojobi

Hey there! We trust you have been enjoying the semester so far. With tons of homework and projects you might have, we are here to guide you through easy ways to get awesome resources from the Library database and for your projects or assignments.

Searching through the Library catalog and deciding on a database to be used for your research work could be daunting considering we have a ton of databases. Today, I would be sharing with you the top 5 databases frequently used and elaborate on one of those.

To get started, you want to make sure you are logged into the UNT Library website. For patrons not at the UNT campus, we have made it easy for you to access resources easily without the VPN installation process. All you need to do now is select Databases from the home page and click Proxy Bookmarklet as seen below.

There are 5 commonly used databases available on the UNT library catalog which provide resources for all fields of life. They are; Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost, JSTOR, Nexis Uni and Web of Science. While I would love to tell you about each of them, today, we would be focusing on the use of the Academic Search Complete database published by EBSCOhost. This database also gives you access to other databases available through EBSCOhost.
Academic Search Complete provides a scholarly collection providing full text coverage for over 10,500 journals for nearly all academic areas of study – including social sciences, humanities, education, computer sciences, engineering, language and linguistics, arts & literature, medical sciences, and ethnic studies, etc. Dates of Coverage: 1975 – Current
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Posted by & filed under Library Resources.

Written By: Raul Gonzalez

There is a common theme among academic libraries, which is to adapt, develop, and maintain. Whether it is a new policy or technology, libraries aim to mold new tools into services for their patrons. Original items are becoming digitized, libraries are reaching farther than their walls, and cutting-edge technologies compose the growing makerspaces in many libraries. But let’s dial back to a web tool most of us know, which are blogs.

Although blogs are not new within UNT Libraries, Scholar Speak is a fresh initiative as a student-to-student scholarly blog.
We hope to use Scholar Speak as a medium to bridge the gap between students, patrons, and their library. This means we will discuss topics and events related to UNT Libraries, as well as inform readers of scholarly tools and insights as they pursue their academic career. To further close this gap, we hope to create a collaborative space, where we hear back from our readers and bring conversation to these topics.

But who are “we”? Scholar Speak is primarily run by the Graduate Services Assistants (GSAs) at UNT Willis Library. We are an extension of Access Services but also an extension of students, like yourself. As of Spring 2019, we are Raul, Janelle, Angela, Anima, Hui-Yu, and Oluwaseyitan. In the near future, we hope to extend our cast of authors by including various voices from UNT Libraries staff and librarians.

As Scholar Speak gains traction, we hope to bring you content that is consistent, interesting, informational, and above all, helpful. One of our missions with Scholar Speak is to highlight resources within UNT Libraries and provide insight on how to access and utilize these items. We look forward to the conversations and ideas our discussions may prompt, and we hope you will be a part of it too.

Feel free to leave suggestions or comments in the comments form or email us at Askus@unt.edu. 

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