Since our building closed in mid-March along with the rest of campus, Gleeson Library staff have been working hard to provide remote access to our services and collections for students, staff, and faculty. We are here to support you — classes are online and so is the library. Here are new ways students and faculty are engaging with library services and collections this year:
We deliver
While most of us are working from home, a small, dedicated crew of library staff are onsite scanning items for course reserves and digital collections, filling book and article requests, and mailing items to USF students, faculty, and staff. For folks who need physical library materials for their homework or research, Document Delivery requests are made in two ways: You can request books and DVDs that Gleeson owns through Ignacio, the library catalog. Or, for items that are not in Gleeson’s collections, use ILLiad, our interlibrary loan (ILL) request system.
We ship physical items for free to our library users and include prepaid return shipping labels. This mail service is offered to current students and faculty wherever you live, in or out of the U.S. In the fall semester, we mailed out 548 items.
Library staff process hundreds of ILL requests from students and faculty every semester. In Fall 2020, we filled 101 requests for print books from other libraries, and 223 for electronic items like journal articles and book chapters. We gave ILLiad a new, cleaner look in December. Making interlibrary loan requests through ILLiad is now easier than ever with its new interface.
Ebooks everywhere
With the move to online classes, new library books are mostly online, too. During the Fall 2020 semester, nearly 4,500 new ebooks were added to our ebook subscription collections. In addition, we purchased 176 individual new ebook titles to support online courses. Find them in Ignacio, the library catalog.
Movie magic
Just like for ebooks, demand for streaming video went way up when classes went online. We filled 186 requests for individual streaming video titles in Fall 2020. Most of those were for one-year licenses. And to help meet the growing demand, in December we purchased perpetual access to two new video collections: Black Studies in Video and LGBT Studies in Video.
Planting seeds
Gleeson Library doesn’t mail you just books and DVDs. In the Fall 2020 semester, we mailed seeds from the USF Seed Library to 97 students, faculty, and staff who wanted to grow herbs, lettuces, chives, onions, greens, and more. Our seed stock changes with the seasons, and you can order online at the Seed Library website.
Ask a librarian
Library help is online while you are. In the Fall 2020 semester, we answered 1,035 questions that came in by email, instant message, and phone. Gleeson librarians conducted 205 1:1 research consultations and held 162 instruction sessions with classes from departments across USF.
Please keep in touch with us! Here’s the latest information, links, and updates from Gleeson Library. We’re looking forward to seeing you online this semester, and, soon we hope, face-to-face, too.