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Although the Science & Engineering Library has been forced to cancel journal subscriptions, library staff are committed to ensuring that faculty, staff, and students continue to have access to journal articles through alternative means. To do this, we have focused on two aspects of the research process: first, providing users with ways to identify relevant articles, particularly if the journals are not owned and therefore unavailable for browsing, and second, acquiring needed articles in a reasonable amount of time, even if we must order them from another institution or a commercial supplier.
The introduction of a wide array of Online Databases, which may be accessed from home or office in addition to their availability in the Library, has greatly improved the research process. Compared to their print counterparts, these databases offer flexible, powerful searching mechanisms that enable users to identify relevant articles more readily. In addition, they provide users with the ability to print or download search results, and in some cases (e.g., Compendex, History of Science, Current Contents) to e-mail results to personal accounts.
In addition, the Science & Engineering Library offers a Current Awareness Profile Service that supports University of Minnesota faculty and staff awareness of relevant current research as it is published in the technical literature. The service delivers customized literature search results to the desktop of each faculty or staff member on a weekly basis.
Traditionally, journal articles that were not available at the University of Minnesota could be requested through Interlibrary Loan (ILL). ILL is available at no charge to University of Minnesota faculty, staff and students. The ILL office tries to deliver photocopies of requested articles within three to four weeks. May documents are delivered electronically.
In addition, the Science & Engineering Library offers a rush document delivery service for faculty, staff and students of the Institute of Technology. This service is limited to those instances in which materials are needed urgently and cannot wait for regular delivery through Interlibrary Loan. The Science & Engineering Library pays for these articles, which average over $20.00 each. Our goal is to deliver requested items within 5 working days
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