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Online Education : Library Services for Students

This guide is intended to make the library website easier to understand and use for distance education students.

Library Services

As a Distance Education student, there are several library services that are particularly important for you to know. This page will detail some of these services and provide quick access links. Please note that this is not an exhaustive list and you should explore the library homepage for additional resources, but this list is a good starting point.

Borrowing Privileges

You must have a Library account and an ILLiad (InterLibrary Loan) account in order to borrow materials. Please remember to keep a current address in both accounts in order for materials to be properly sent to you.

You will be able to request items owned by Missouri S&T by clicking "Place Request" in the Libraries Catalog. For items that are not available through S&T, you can search through the MOBIUS catalog in order to discover items at other locations in Missouri, or you will have to place a request through InterLibrary Loan (ILL). Users who live near a library that is part of MOBIUS may turn in books to that library to avoid shipping charges. Otherwise, you must return item(s) to the library at your own expense.

Please look at our Borrowing and Circulation page for information on checkout processes, as well as our Distance Education FAQ for more information on how to receive and ship back items.

Course Reserves

Course reserves are items that your professor(s) put on "hold" for students that are taking their courses in order to make sure that students can have easy access to required reads or resources. The Electronic Course Reserves page should detail the items put on reserve each semester. It is good practice to check the reserves page at the beginning of each semester.

Ask Us Chat Feature

The Ask Us chat feature allows users to chat with a library staff member online. This is best used for quick questions, but you can also ask more in-depth questions on chat. It just might be the case that these questions will be referred to the appropriate librarian who may best answer your question. The chat is often live and you will receive a response within minutes, but you can also leave a chat ticket if the chat is offline and someone will get back to you as soon as possible.

Research Consultations

Librarians do offer individual research consultations which are available by request. Reference librarians can help with developing a search strategy, finding topics for research assignments, and selecting appropriate electronic resources and reference materials to conduct your research. Please fill out the Research Assistance Request Form if you would like to schedule a consultation, and the appropriate librarian to handle your request will get back to you shortly. For students needing help with any aspect of Scholarly Communications, such as research data management plans, copyright concerns, open access, or digital repositories, this can also be requested through the research consultation form.