Pius XII Memorial Library at SLU offers a wealth of resources and services
for students and faculty seeking access through the World Wide Web. Our URL is:
http://www.slu.edu/libraries/pius/.
Please add our address to your bookmarks or favorite sites..
This page is intended to orient Parks College Masters in Aviation Safety
students and faculty to library services and resources available to them. Many
of our distance learners cannot easily travel to the Saint Louis campus, and so
may have difficulty accessing campus library resources. However, even if you
live
at a distance, you have access to numerous services and resources from
this web-site, including the online full-text of over 15,000 journals. We hope
the material presented here will help you get the most out of your courses at SLU. If you have questions that are not addressed here, please contact Chet
Bunnell at 314-977-3594 or e-mail at
bunnellcs@slu.edu.
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INTRODUCTION
The reason behind this presentation is simply that
not everything is on the Internet. The
Internet is great and wonderful with many, many useful sites, but there are
limits to what is there. Much information is contained in journal, magazines,
and books which are not available or freely available on the internet.
SLU and the Libraries at SLU spend a
great deal of money to make these materials available to our students and
faculty. We do this so that our students and faculty will have access to the
best information available. Much of this information is contained in databases,
which, as I will be using the term, refer to indexes to articles in periodicals
or journals, books, and other types of information resources.
I am sure that all of you are
familiar with and use frequently the Google Search Service. It is an excellent
service, but it is sort of the Wal-Mart of the Internet. You can find some of
everything on Google.
But, if you want finer quality, you
may want to go to a fine tailor, diamond expert, or a finer car dealer.
The same is true with information!
QUALITY--That is what the
databases that the Library brings to you are all about. The journals
indexed in these databases have the best information available. Many times the
information is rechecked and evaluated in other experts before it is published.
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Pius Library Homepage <
http://www.slu.edu/libraries/pius/ > will be the Gateway for much of your
research and access to the databases.
To Receive Articles From Pius Library:
As used here, a database is a compilation of journal, magazine and
newspaper articles, indexed in various ways to make retrieval easier.
Certain databases will include other types of publications such as books,
reports, conference proceeding and others. At the very least the database will
provide a list of sources relevant to your topic. In other cases, the
abstract (short summary) of the material will be provided, while in the best
case scenario, your search will return the electronic full-text version of the
article. Reading the abstract when it is available can help you eliminate
articles that are not relevant to your topic--a big time saver.
From the Pius Library homepage,
click on
Browse Databases (A-Z) or
Databases by Subject.
Find an Article
Browse Databases (A-Z)
Databases by Subject
The first will provide
an alphabetical list of the databases by title, while the second will list
them by a loose subject arrangement. These databases will require your SLU
email account information to login from off campus.
The databases mentioned here are only available from our web-site using
your SLU email account information. When you attempt to access one of the
databases, you will be asked for your username and password. The
username is the
first part of your SLU email account (before the @slu.edu) and the password is
whatever you type in to access your SLU email account. Any other email
provider information will not work. It must be your SLU email info.
Using your your SLU email account information
allows the system to verify that you are a current student, staff or faculty
member at SLU.
Useful databases include:
Academic Search Premier [general topics]
Applied Science and Technology
Aviation Week Newsletters
Compendex [engineering]
LexisNexis Academic [news, business and legal topics]
PsycInfo [psychology]
You may find many others valuable to your search. The
ones mentioned are only
suggestions to get you started. Depending on the database, you will see
the full text immediately, see a link to the full text or .pdf file, or see a
link to
FIND FULL-TEXT . Find Full-Text will take you in to our Article/Journal
Finder to locate an electronic or paper version. Since you are distance
learners, only the electronic option will help you.
If the database contains the full-text of the article
you need, you can quickly and easily download it to your computer.
If not you will need to check
Interlibrary Loan for Articles.
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FULL-TEXT VS PDF
I have mentioned that some of the databases have the full
text of the article available to you immediate. For these articles simply
click on the link provided. The links will appear a little differently from
database to database (these are provided by commercial companies over which we
have no control).
Please remember that there is a difference between
full-text and PDF.
Usually the PDF will provide an exact copy of the article
as it appeared in the original journal or magazine. This will include any
graphs or charts, which may provide valuable information for your research.
You will need to install the Adobe Reader if you do not already have it on
your computer. It is available free on the Internet.
The full-text will usually have only the text versions—no
graphs or tables. There are some combinations, such as full-text plus the
charts and graphs.
For scientific fields, engineering, and aviation, the
graphs and tables are extremely useful—more useful than the text itself at
times! So always try to get the PDF format, if you can.
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If a magazine, journal or newspaper article is not available online and not
available in hardcopy (paper) at Pius Library, you can request an electronic
copy through ILLiad, our interlibrary loan service. When we receive the
requested item from another library, we can send it to you as an Adobe Acrobat
.pdf file. The article will actually reside in a file on our server from which
you can retrieve it.
You may request this using an online request form available at "
Interlibrary
Loan" found by clicking the "Services" on the left side of the Pius
homepage and then selecting 'Interlibrary Loan'. You must complete the
registration form for ILLiad system the first time you use it. After that it
will save you a lot of time.
You may request only books or journal/magazine article NOT owned by Pius
Library from ILL
For materials owned by Pius Library, you are also welcome to use the ILL
service at your local
public library.
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To Search for Useful Books:MERLIN is Pius's online book catalog.
SLU has entered into two consortiums: MERLIN and MOBIUS. MERLIN is the
combined catalogs of the University of Missouri system plus the catalogs of
SLU. MOBIUS is MERLIN plus most of the other academic libraries in Missouri.
This means that you have a larger collection of books from which to choose.
One can search the catalog(s) by a variety of means including author,
title, subject, keyword, journal/magazine/newspaper title, and others.
But as a distant learner you are at a slight disadvantage, Pius has no
service to deliver books from our collection to you. Thus you will need
to get any book(s) that you find from another library or through
Interlibrary
Loan (ILL) from another library.
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Electronic Reserves: Your instructor may place materials onto our
Electronic Reserves system for your course. The password will be provided to you
only by your instructor. You will have a different password for each course.
Interlibrary Loan (ILL): Before you can request copies of articles
through our ILL
service, you must register in our ILLiad system. You will set your own
username and password. Be sure you can easily remember the login you set.
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A wide range of online encyclopedias, almanacs, dictionaries, and other
reference sources are available from our "Useful
Websites" link under "Research
Help" on the Pius Library home page. Additional
sources for background information are listed in the Resource Guides, found
under "Find Articles and More" on the library home page. You should also become
familiar with the Reference Room collections and services of your
local libraries. We can
help you identify and locate useful reference works.
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Although you have a substantial amount of material
available to you electronically, you will miss an important part of your
education if you do not become familiar with libraries as sources of
information. Also, to have ready access to some
journal articles and books, you will need to establish a relationship with a
library with which you have privileges—especially interlibrary loan [see above]
. We urge you to visit the libraries in your local
area and establish connections with them.
The majority of college and university libraries welcome community patrons.
They are likely to allow you to use their databases, books and journals on-site
as a guest. Nearly all Academic libraries in the State of Missouri allow
access, use of their databases, and circulation privileges to SLU students with
your valid SLU student ID. Other academic libraries may charge you a fee for
circulation privileges. A phone call or a visit to their web site should get you
the details for any particular library.
Public libraries serve virtually everyone in the United States. These are
usually smaller libraries with collections that are very different from those of
academic libraries. However, they will have helpful Reference Room collections
and services, and usually can provide Interlibrary Loan services. Public
libraries also have their own access to online databases and the Internet.
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Tutorial for Basic Information Literacy
Since you may not have used a college or university library for a while, you
may feel rusty in your library skills. Then check out the
Basic Library
Tutorial, located on the Pius homepage. This will guide in your use of the
library and information seeking strategies to complete your research needs. Feel
free to explore the various tutorials available on the page.
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You can ask us for help by e-mail (piusref@slu.edu)
or telephone (314-977-3103). Be sure to tell us that you are one of our distance
students. You may contact Chet Bunnell at
bunnellcs@slu.edu.
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