Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery

One of the services a library provides its patrons is interlibrary loan and document delivery. The American Library Association gives a definition of Interlibrary Loan as “a process by which a library requests material from, or supplies material to, another library. The purpose of Interlibrary Loan is to obtain, upon request of a library user, material not available in the user’s local community.”
The process of requesting books or journal articles from other libraries is pretty straightforward. Every library has an interlibrary loan form for patrons to fill out for this purpose. However, it is not always a foolproof method of obtaining exactly what a patron wants. The problem usually stems from the fact that sometimes a patron does not provide complete information on an item.

Requesting a book is simple. All you need to do is giving the title of the book, the name of the author and the date it was published. However, requesting a journal article is a different story completely. Just the name of the author or authors, the name of the journal the article published in and the date published does not help locating it right away. An author can have several articles published in one journal. At the same time, since these days, most journals have their online version, the dates published in print and online are not necessarily one and the same. To request an article, its title is always needed. Better yet if volume and issue numbers are also available, it would make it even easier for a busy Interlibrary Loan librarian to find that article in a timely manner. Without them, there would be a lot of fumbling and stumbling all the way to an unhappy patron who did not receive exactly what he was looking for.

Kultida Dunagin
Electronic Resources and Interlibrary Loan

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Community Campus Libraries at Anderson and Easley

Oh the looks and the comments we get when a student walks into the Community Campus Library at either the Anderson or the Easley campus. The Anderson Campus library is only 16’x24’! The Easley Campus not quite double that size. Both Community Campus Libraries could fit in the Pendleton Campus Library with plenty of room to spare. Typical comments are “This is the library?” “I’ve never seen a library this small.” “I guess I will have to go to Pendleton for my research.” “I will never find what I need here.”

My typical response as the Anderson Campus Library Coordinator is we may be small but we are powerful! While we may not be physically impressive we have access to all the materials that TCTC has in their libraries. Books can be borrowed from any campus and shipped to the campus that is convenient for you. Generally that will take a day or two.  TCTC actually has access to more e-books than physical volumes! The Library contains over 96,000 books and audio-visual material (38,000 print and AV; 58,000 e-books), 160 print journals, 20 newspapers, and many databases supplied by TCTC, PASCAL and the State of South Carolina's DISCUS program. We also have access to books through PASCAL. PASCAL books will take a little longer to arrive. PASCAL provides us with books from any academic library in South Carolina and 235,000 e-Books.

The Anderson Campus Library is located off of the main lobby on the first floor (room 120). The Easley library is located down a side hall off of the lobby (room 116) Both libraries are just steps away from the open computer labs. The library staff is always willing to go to the lab to help you with a research problem.


Size doesn’t matter when it comes to the Community Campus Libraries. Please remember the library is just a click away!  library.tctc.edu



Debby Thrasher
Anderson Community Campus Library
dthrash1@tctc.edu