UofSLibrary News

The 2024 Bike Lackawanna Season has ended today. We were happy to be participants in this green initiative again this year. Plan to join us again next April!

A new “My Account” feature has been added to the EZBorrow search platform (https://ezborrow.reshare.indexdata.com).

This feature allows you to view current and past requests and authenticate before initiating a search. You’ll also have the option to save searches, save items, and create lists of saved items.

To access the new features, please follow this quick guide.

This week (October 21-27), we celebrate International Open Access Week!

International Open Access Week is a global initiative sponsored by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resource Coalition (SPARC) that aims to engage communities in discussion about the importance and benefits of open access.

The ability to share and access research and scholarly information is important to us here at the Weinberg Memorial Library, and we know that it is equally important to our faculty here at the University of Scranton.  Did you know that in 2023, nearly 50% of works that were published by University of Scranton authors and indexed in OpenAlex were published under some form of open access?

We think that’s amazing and would love to hear more!  If you’ve recently published open access and would like to share your experience and what open scholarship means to you, please message us at affordablelearning@scranton.edu.  We’d love to highlight some of your stories as we continue to celebrate Open Access Week.

If you’ve always wondered about publishing open access but were worried about cost prohibitive article processing charges (APCs), fear not!  The Library is excited to announce partnerships with some of our publishers to provide Read and Publish opportunities which will cover APCs in select journals for authors affiliated with the University of Scranton.

Our current agreements cover publishing opportunities with the Association for Computing Machinery, Cambridge University Press, the American Chemical Society, and Springer Nature. You can learn more about these opportunities by visiting our Open Access Publishing Research Guide or reaching out to the OER Committee at affordablelearning@scranton.edu.

We hope you’ll take advantage of these exciting offers, and we look forward to providing more opportunities in the future.

The Pennsylvania Library Association has named the Weinberg Memorial Library as the 2024 Library of the Year!

Each year, the Pennsylvania Library Association (PaLA) honors the service of their members, as well as those community volunteers, who go above and beyond the call of duty to support the work of libraries throughout the commonwealth.

The Weinberg Memorial Library’s vision is to promote “an accessible, inclusive, supportive, and welcoming environment where everyone can learn and grow creatively, intellectually, and spiritually.” The library staff embodies this vision in their day-to-day operations, and prides themselves on service to the community, professional development, and service to the Pennsylvania Library Association.

Over the past year and a half, the Weinberg Memorial Library has accomplished much in the areas of diversity, equity, and inclusion. They collaborated with campus groups, offices, and faculty to host a series of films to celebrate Black History, Arab American Heritage, and Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander months for both students and the Scranton community at large. Library staff created new research guides for gender and sexuality and accessibility, and a Statement on Harmful Language to address systemic problems in the Library of Congress subject headings. They also created an Accessibility/Sensory Map to highlight the library’s spaces and features with general accessibility, types of lighting, and noise level. The guide is helpful to all, but particularly valuable to neurodiverse students. From library support for open educational resources to a collection diversity audit focused on children’s books to support the greater Scranton community, and to hiring an outside consultant to review DEI efforts, the Library has demonstrated their ongoing commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Deserving of recognition is the Library’s focus on professional development. The Weinberg Memorial Library has been a long-time institutional member of the Pennsylvania Library Association as well as supporting their staff both financially and with time as personal members of the Association. They not only support their own staff, but were a 2023 conference sponsor so that all librarians could have an enhanced experience through coffee and conversation.

Many staff attend, volunteer, and lead within the Association. Sylvia Orner served as conference chair in 2020 and is currently President. Kate Cummings was previously Treasurer on the statewide board of directors and is now serving as Intellectual Freedom Committee Chair. Rebecca Dzikowski is the current Mentorship Subcommittee Chair. Ian O’Hara serves as the College and Research Division grant funds manager and is on the EDI Committee. Sheli Pratt-McHugh was 3rd Vice-President, Membership Committee Chair, and served on the conference committee and EDI committee. Marleen Cloutier was the 2023 Conference Chair for Technical Arrangements and is now the vice-chair elect for the Technical Services Round Table. Melissa Gallo is the treasurer for the Northeast Chapter. As the nominator indicated, “We all individually have gained so much from our time and efforts within and for the Association, and it has collectively contributed to the Weinberg Memorial Library’s ability to serve its community in impactful ways.”

First-year students, join us at the Library for the Heritage Hunt!

As part of New Student Orientation, incoming first-year students participate in the Library’s Heritage Hunt. The Heritage Hunt is an interactive introduction to the Library and its resources. First-year students must register for a time slot to participate and receive credit.

We still have session times available for Thursday August 29th & Friday August 30th.

There will be no sessions held after Friday, August 30, 2024.

Visit our webpage for more information and to sign up!

Maybe, but likely No

The Weinberg Memorial Library typically does not purchase textbooks for the circulating collections. Some textbook publishers and copyright holders limit libraries from holding copies of their textbooks. Textbooks are also updated much more frequently than the traditional library book, thus making them difficult to keep up-to-date. Additionally, the quantity of copies needed and length of the loan can also be problematic for libraries. Due to space limitations the Library would only be able to hold a few copies in the circulating collection and once those copies are checked out, other students can’t use them. However, the Library does have a small collection of textbooks in our Textbook Reserves Collection.

Textbook Reserves Collection

The Library does have some textbooks on reserve in our Textbook Reserve Collection, these textbooks were generously donated to the Library by other students. Titles in this collection have the word “Textbook” before the call number and can be requested at the Library Services Desk. However, they are limited to a one-day loan, so that many students can use them over the course of a semester. To view a list of titles in the Textbook Reserve Collection – type “Textbook Reserve Collection” in quotes into either Royal Search or the Library Catalog to view a list of titles. 

Searching for a textbook 

If the Library did acquire a print copy of a textbook being used for your class, it would be found in the library catalog. To search for your textbook, go the Library’s Home Page and go to the Library Catalog search bar. Change the pull down menu to “title” and type in the exact title of the textbook into the Library Catalog search box. It can be helpful to know the editor, author, or edition, since most textbooks have generic names such as Fundamentals of Psychology, Microeconomics, etc. and often have multiple editions. Novels and supplemental reading, such as a short story or essay, may potentially be found in the circulating collections of the Library. Use the same procedure listed above to see if the book is in the collection. For more information see our How do I … find my textbook? Research Guide

Course Reserves 

Some professors put their textbooks or course materials on reserve for classes. Textbooks on reserve can be borrowed at the Library Services Desk. Typically, textbooks on reserve for classes have shorter loan periods of only a few hours and are meant to be used at the Library. For more information on course reserves see our How do I … find what my professor put on reserves? Research Guide.

EZBorrow 

If the Library does not have your textbook here, you may also want to try searching EZBorrow (PALCI), a direct borrowing service. You can find a link to EZBorrow from the Library’s Home Page. EZBorrow is an interlibrary loan system providing access to books not available in the Weinberg Memorial Library. The system simultaneously searches the catalogs of over 50 libraries in PALCI (Partnership for Academic Library Collaboration and Innovation). Books are mailed free of charge and available to pick up at the Library Services Desk.

If you have additional questions about finding or borrowing books from the Library, please reach out to Ask a Librarian.