T: Amazing Husband ST: Three-year-old Wonder Prof. G: Advisor I Prof. C: Advisor II Julie: Stylish Sister Rob: Awesome Brother Belle: Our Cat Bill: Grumbling BIL Rita: Uncomplicated SIL SMU: Smallish Midwestern University Doctoral University: where I got my Ph.D.
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Wednesday, August 16, 2006
The Library Situation
I am working one of my syllabi today, and have been frantically searching for copies of a few articles or book chapters I read in graduate school to exerpt for use in my undergraduate Introduction to Subfield course. My home office is pretty well-organized at this point, but there are some articles I think I recycled before I moved and so the hunt is on for clean copies to put on e-reserve. This has necessitated a trip to Smallish Midwestern University's library, as well as familiarization with the library's website and electronic resources.
One of my greatest fears about going to a smaller university was that the library would be inadequate. I was truly spoiled at Doctoral University's library, which subscribed to nearly any journal I ever imagined using and which never failed to produce any book I requested, even if it was in a different language or from an obscure European press. During my last year of graduate school, while I was writing my dissertation (it's crazy to me that I only finished in late June -- it feels like it was years ago), I rarely went to the library because Doctoral University's online resources and library staff were so excellent at getting me whatever I needed right over the internet. I was concerned that when I came here, I'd be stuck waiting for weeks to get anything out of the library, and I was already plotting how I'd get friends employed at R1 schools to send me PDFs of journal articles if my little library didn't have a subscription.
No need, though. My library experience thus far has been quite wonderful. SMU's library doesn't have a great selection of books in my field, but they have a huge network of other university libraries in this state they draw from. I requested a book this morning, and just got an email that it will be ready to check out in SMU's library tomorrow. Tomorrow! Plus, I discovered that SMU's library is directly connected to Midwestern State's R1's library, and so any journal that the R1 subscribes to electronically, I can get, too. And that includes the law library, which is a resource I use a lot in my research. I am overjoyed at this discovery. I don't feel so far away from R1 life, so separated from the excellent resources to which I've grown accustomed.
Lucky! I'm a huge fan of online resources...my doctoral university had a huge medical school library, which I used for my research as well. My school now has a terrible library, and terrible resources, so I drive a lot to Big State School and pay $65 a year to use *their* library!
You know... the funny thing is that in my specific area, my doctoral university (which is a state school) is much better than the ivy-league my husband works as a post-doc at. Since we travel infrequently to doctoral university, I'm frustrated everytime I find a new book I need because almost always, Ivy-league school won't have it. FRUSTRATING!
anyway... for some weird reason my browser wasn't loading your new posts, so I only got to see these (8/16,19, 20) today even though I've been checking daily since Tuesday last week. Gotta hit refresh once in a while!!
So cool! I love articles available online...it makes life so much easier and you can't beat that. Glad to hear the library is promising.