Special Services for Faculty

UMass Lowell Libraries are committed to serving the needs of UML faculty members. The Libraries offer a wealth of electronic and print resources as well as the expertise to assist faculty in integrating them into their teaching and research. Librarians can guide students through more than 300 databases offering over 15,000 journals in full text.

In addition to traditional library instruction for classes of students, reference librarians offer sessions for individual faculty members or departments on request. Topics for these sessions could include in introduction to a new library resource or a refresher on a long held one.  Subject specialist librarians are eager to collaborate on developing general, subject or resource-specific sessions for classes or assist in research.

The University Libraries welcome the faculty members’ suggestions for material to be added to the collections.  Recommendations may be submitted via a web form or to a library liaison.  Please review the Libraries’ acquisitions policy before making a request for purchase.

Faculty members interested in course reserves services should examine the reserves policies and procedures to ensure proper administration of reserve materials.  The reserves form can be downloaded.

Alerting Services: Want to keep up with current research in your field?  Many UML databases offer automatic alerting services as part of the subscription.   These alerts can be subject or name searches, or tables of content of your favorite journals.  Consult the list at Alerts and sign up for any that are helpful to you.
 
BLC Cards: As members of the Boston Library Consortium, UMass Lowell Libraries offers cards giving our faculty and students borrowing privileges at any of the following member institutions:

Boston College
Boston Public Library
Boston University
Brandeis University
Brown University
MBL/WHOI (Woods Hole)
MIT
Northeastern University
State Library of Massachusetts
Tufts University
University of Connecticut
UMass Amherst
UMass Boston
UMass Dartmouth
UMass Medical Center
University of New Hampshire
Wellesley College
Williams College

Applications and more information are available at either library’s circulation desk.

Borrowing: Faculty may borrow up to 20 items for one semester. Items may be renewed online.

Class Reserve Readings: Items such as books, CDs, and photocopies may be placed on reserve at either library’s circulation desk for one semester. Reserves circulate for two hours at a time. Please refer to our Reserves Policy for further information. You may also put articles from several of the library’s online databases on Electronic Reserve or provide links to those articles on your own class web page. For information please contact Ellen MJ Keane, or at ext. 4594.

Library Instruction: Because of the rapid change in our online resources each semester, update sessions for individual faculty or for departments can be requested. We also encourage faculty-librarian collaboration in developing general, subject or resource specific sessions for classes. Request a library session either by using the online request a library session form or by calling the reference desk at the library that is most convenient (Lydon, ext. 3213; O’Leary, ext. 4554).

Media Services: Instructional media resources, production, presentation, repair and consulting services are available. Media Centers are located in both the O'Leary and Lydon Libraries with an extensive video collection, staffed media presentation rooms, production services and depositories of loan equipment. Faculty may borrow equipment overnight from either Media Center. Call ext. 4557 at O’Leary or ext. 3202 at Lydon for more information.

Reciprocal Faculty Borrowing Program: Faculty may obtain on-site access and/or borrowing privileges at over 160 research libraries participating in the OCLC Reciprocal Faculty Borrowing Program. Please ask Library Director, Patricia Noreau, for details.

Suggest New Library Materials: Faculty members may select materials from a wide variety of sources, publishers' catalogs, printouts or e-mailed lists from the Library's online sources such as Books-In-Print. Requests for books or subscriptions to journals should be forwarded directly to the librarian liaison for the department or college. Requests for media materials should be made to Paul Coppens, or at ext. 4559.

Virtual Catalogs/Interlibrary Loan: UMass Lowell participates in two Virtual Catalogs, the Boston Library Consortium Virtual Catalog and the Massachusetts Statewide Virtual Catalog, which enable UMass Lowell patrons to simultaneously search the catalogs of many other libraries and place their own requests for materials not owned by UMass Lowell.  This method is often faster than traditional ILL.  For more information on using either Virtual Catalog please see our Virtual Catalog information pages.

Interlibrary Loan (ILL) service obtains materials not owned by UMass Lowell and not available via the Virtual Catalogs for UML faculty, students and staff by borrowing from other libraries.  ILL services are available at both Lydon and O'Leary Libraries and request forms are online.

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