Education

Research: Easy Breezy at ASU Libraries

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You and I both know the feeling. It starts deep in the pit of your stomach and bubbles up into your esophagus until your air supply is cut off and you are gasping for breath. It’s the feeling you get when you look at your calendar and realize you haven’t started your 15-page research paper that is due in 3 days. Have no fear, ASU Libraries are here. There are plenty of tools available to you that should help you breath (and sleep) easier throughout the semester. And while I am not condoning your procrastination, I can tell you this: these tools make research fast and painless. Let’s start at the beginning: the ASU Library site.

Before I go into detail on a few of the tools available, I want to point out one very cool feature of the ASU libraries. If you’re ever stuck with a question or can’t seem to find what you are looking for, it has never been easier to get in touch with someone from the library staff who can help. Right in front of you on the main page for the libraries is a button that looks like this:

Those three icons may be small, but they pack a powerful punch. Click on the button, and you can get in touch with the library in three ways: email, telephone, or live chat. The email and live chat services are available 24/7. (If you send an email, they will respond within 24 hours.) I have used all three services, and I must say they are very helpful. Especially at midnight the day before a paper is due. If you’re curious, here is a link to the page that describes the services.

The library at the Polytechnic campus is a curious sight. When you first enter the building, you probably will ask yourself: “I thought this was a library. Where are all the books?” Up until this semester, if you can believe it, there were even less books. Seems odd for a library to not have much on the shelves, but when you take into consideration the vision of University Technology Officer, Dr. Adrian Sannier, it starts to make sense. In February 2002, Dr. Sannier spoke to a group of ASU librarians about some of his ideas for the future of libraries. I pulled a quote from the video that I thought was compelling. He told the librarians:

Ideas do the most good when they spread around the fastest. I would like to live in a world where all the books are online. As a delivery mechanism for information, bookshelves have seen their day. If Google could deliver the information…and I could print it on demand…that’s the University Library that I get.

(The librarians’ meeting is fully documented on Google Video, and divided into three parts. If you care to watch, here are some links: Part 1


, Part 2


, Part 3


.)

So if you are wondering where all the books and journals and newspapers went, you need look no further than the ASU Libraries website. If you are writing a research paper, you will probably want to start out on this page.

[If I could embed video, here is where I would insert video of how to search for a paper.]

Once you find an article that tickles your fancy, you can easily download a PDF copy. If the article is not available online, you can request it through ASU and they can email you a copy for free. Please note that this service is not automatic. Sometimes it can take a couple days for the article to be located, scanned, and emailed to you. So for those super-procrastinators, be aware. The following video walks you through how to request an article from ASU.

[If I could embed video, here is where I would insert video of how to request an article.]

Hopefully this helps. Research can be a daunting task, but when you use the tools available to you at ASU, you can eliminate much of the stress that is typically associated with finding information. Happy searching.