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Visitors Guide to Research Resources

This guide is intended to alert campus visitors to research resources that are available to them from the ISU Libraries - both remotely and on-campus.

Featured Print Books

Leisure Collection is a collection of novels and other books identified as "recreational" reading.Books from this collection may be checked out for four weeks only, regardless of the patron's status. Items may be renewed unless a hold has been placed on the item by another patron. The Leisure Collection is located in the Fireplace Reading Room - just outside the Bookends Cafe.

New Book Area - After new books have been processed, many are displayed for one week on the New Book Shelves in the Learning Connections Center. All books in this area are eligible to be checked out, simply take it to the Circulation Desk along with your library card. If you wish to consult an online list of all new titles added to the Library’s collection each week, use the New Title List.

Check Out Our Books!

Books from the General Collection are loaned to ISU Visitor Card holders for a period of 4 weeks.

The library's automated circulation system provides up-to-the-minute circulation status reports on the Quick Search result screens. It will report, for example, that an item is "Checked out" (and due on a certain date), "checked in" and so on. Checking the status of a book can help you ensure the book is actually available before coming into the building to retrieve the book.

The system will not allow anyone to place a "hold" on a book that is listed as checked-in, so it is possible someone else may get to the book before you can get to campus to check it out. If the book is not on the shelf for various reasons, please ask for it at the Circulation Desk, in the Main Lobby of the Library.

Free Web-Accessible Books

See the full list of FREE web-accessible book collections available here. Note that some are specific to science disciplines and others cover a wide range of disciplines.

Google Books Search

For more information about what is or is not contained in Google Books, see About Google Books.

Google Book Search

Open WorldCat

Open WorldCat is like a library catalog for 28,000 libraries all rolled into one. After you search Open WorldCat, and pull up a record for something you want to locate, scroll down the page to see the list of libraries that own the item. You can type in your zip code to reorder the libraries so that the libraries nearest your location are listed first.

Your Librarian

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Lorrie Pellack
Contact:
Head, Research & Instruction Services Dept.
150c Parks Library
Ames, IA 50011-2140
Phone: 515-294-5569