This document provides guidance for helping students with questions about accessing electronic resources. It outlines four main steps: 1) Find out what resource the student wants and note details like title and author; 2) Determine how the student is trying to access it and if they are on or off campus; 3) Try accessing the resource yourself; 4) Use library search tools to check if the resource is available and troubleshoot issues like broken links, reporting problems to the appropriate team. The goal is to help students directly when possible and determine when to pass them to other specialists.

1. Three things to try
when faced with an e-resource question

2. To get a clearer understanding of
• some of the difficulties students can face when accessing our
electronic resources
• how you help them with these in your everyday work
• when you help them (so when to pass the user on to the
e-resources team).

3. 1.
Have they come in via the library website?

4. 1.
Have they come in via the library website?
=
Do they come through the door before they
enter the library?

11. Visualisation of
the Internet by
the Opte
Project, 2005.

13. Visualisation of
the Internet by
the Opte
Project, 2005.

14. = things we’ve paid for
. .
.
.
___________
(* 80% of them . . .)
.
.

16. i. Find out what they want, and make
a note
• e.g.
– The title of the book, the author
– what publication (journal title)
– the name of the article
– the author
– The volume and year
(e.g. 1 , 2 , 3)

17. Article title | Journal Title | Volume | Year
Ashley N. Anderson, Heather Kennedy, Peter DeWitt, Erin
Anderson, Marianne Z. Wamboldt, Dance/movement
therapy impacts mood states of adolescents in a psychiatric
hospital, The Arts in Psychotherapy, Volume 41, Issue 3, July
2014

18. | Journal Title | Volume | Year
Ashley N. Anderson, Heather Kennedy, Peter DeWitt, Erin
Anderson, Marianne Z. Wamboldt,
, The Arts in Psychotherapy, Volume 41, Issue 3, July
2014

19. Article title | | Volume | Year
Ashley N. Anderson, Heather Kennedy, Peter DeWitt, Erin
Anderson, Marianne Z. Wamboldt, Dance/movement
therapy impacts mood states of adolescents in a psychiatric
hospital, , Volume 41, Issue 3, July
2014

20. Article title | Journal Title | | Year
Ashley N. Anderson, Heather Kennedy, Peter DeWitt, Erin
Anderson, Marianne Z. Wamboldt, Dance/movement
therapy impacts mood states of adolescents in a psychiatric
hospital, The Arts in Psychotherapy, , Issue 3, July
2014

21. Article title | Journal Title | Volume |
Ashley N. Anderson, Heather Kennedy, Peter DeWitt, Erin
Anderson, Marianne Z. Wamboldt, Dance/movement
therapy impacts mood states of adolescents in a psychiatric
hospital, The Arts in Psychotherapy, Volume 41, Issue 3, July

22. ii. Find out they are trying to
access it
e.g.
Library search (Discovery) or our OPAC?
(they’ll always call it ‘the library website’, so you
need to dig!)
Google (or Google Scholar)
A database?
Are they stuck on the login page? (
etc . . .
)

23. iii. Find out if they are
or
campus

24. iv. Try to access the resource yourself
(Just like you did in the first stage of the training.)

25. iv. Try to access the resource yourself
If you can access it, you can be more sure it’s them!
In which case, try some quick wins:
If not their account may be locked (call #6500).
If so, tell them its their BSU username and password (and they’re probably
locked out!)

26. If the link is broken . . . .

27. If the link is broken . . . .

28. If the link is broken . . . .

29. If the link is broken . . . .

30. So . . .
1. Find what they want (already done!)
2. If a journal: put title in to ‘E-journal by title’ search
tab
A bit about this tool . . .

34. Where journals are concerned, is the same as
asking the library:
Have you got it?
(For example: 1, 2, 3)

35. ‘E-journal by title’ search can tell you:
i. If we even have a subscription to the
journal (if it doesn't come up here, it's very
likely we don't have it)
>> So offer an alternative, e.g. ILL
ii. If it is a subscription and it is within our
date range . . .

36. And here’s two things you *may* be able to do to make
them
. . .

37. • “Permalinking” . . .
• Send them the PDF by email (for these
providers)

38. . . . and report the broken link to

39. :
• Pair up, and get in to character . . .