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CHESTER FRITZ LIBRARY SERVICES
FOR DISTANCE DEGREE PROGRAMS
sed significantly since the 1990s when assistance consisted of Interactive
Video Network sessions, mediated computer searches, interlibrary loan
service, handouts, and telephone reference service. By the mid-1990s,
a Coordinator of Distance Education Services position was created. In
order to meet the needs of the Continuing Education community, the Library’s
goal then, as it is today, was to promote outreach and personalize distance
library service, as fully as it does for on-campus students. To facilitate
this goal ten years later, computer sophistication allows the Library
to provide web pages, full-text online resources, interlibrary loan service,
instruction sessions, and e-mail or toll-free reference assistance.
Many Distance Education students are older than average students who
already are working in a professional career. A majority live in North
Dakota, but students reside across the United States and Canada and in
other countries such as Australia, the Bahamas, Germany, Guam, Malaysia,
Puerto Rico, and the United Kingdom. The Distance Education Coordinator
interacts predominantly with students who are enrolled in various Continuing
Education graduate programs in Education, Social Work, Business and Public
Administration, Space Studies, and Technology. Undergraduates in Engineering
programs, General Studies, Social Science, Education, and Business also
seek library services from a distance. Nursing students in undergraduate
and graduate programs contact the Harley French Medical Library for assistance.
The Chester Fritz Library Distance Education web page, located at <http://www.library.und.edu/gethelp/distance_ed.jsp>,
provides basic sign-up instructions and links to a range of full-text
resources, from reference facts to lengthy books. With the Library’s
new EZ-proxy connections, one can access these full-text materials by
simply using a U-Mail username and password. Any of these full-text resources
may then be printed at home, if desired.
Online reference sources include full-text statistics, directories, biographies,
dictionaries, and citation style guides. If a student needs social or
economic statistics, the Statistical Abstract of the United States may
be quickly checked. A biography may be located in the Discovering Collection
or the Biographical Dictionary. Citation style guide links offer resources
and examples for creating correct citations, in styles such as APA, for
the bibliography of a paper.
Links to online government web sites are plentiful throughout the Library’s
web pages. Some of the best points to enter the government web sites are
through <http://www.science.gov>
or <http://www.firstgov.gov>.
Newspapers, magazines, and journals are available through many of our
full-text databases. If a student needs newspaper articles for a class,
full-text newspaper articles may be found in several databases: the Historical
New York Times Database, dating from 1851 to the present; the Newspaper
Database, covering over 550 national and local current newspapers; or
Ethnic NewsWatch, which provides a diversified perspective.
A student may check a myriad of journal databases. Frequently, the general
Academic Search Premier or Business Source Premier databases provide excellent
starting places for finding full-text, peer-reviewed journal articles.
Other databases, such as JSTOR, provide articles archived back to a journal’s
first publication. The Chester Fritz Library currently provides access
to 80 electronic databases with over 24,000 journals in full-text format.
The Library also assists faculty by providing electronic full-text reserve
articles for their classes. Access Services staff scan faculty-requested
articles, which students then access at home with a faculty-assigned password.
Over 13,000 full-text netLibrary books are available in the ODIN Library
Catalog through the library’s MINITEX network agreements with libraries
in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota. These books emphasize information
in Education, Business, and Social Sciences.
If full-text online resources are not sufficient, a student may identify
additional journal citations through specialized databases on “Resources
by Subject” web pages or look at book citations through the ODIN
Library Catalog or WorldCat. The student may fill out an interlibrary
loan form online and submit the request. The Library’s Interlibrary
Loan staff will quickly respond and journal articles will be e-mailed
or sent to the student for free. Books will be mailed to the student and
the student simply pays for the postage to return the books to the library.
If students are uncertain about how to find information or resources,
class instruction in person, through IVN, or through electronic chat sessions
may be requested. Also, students may always peruse Chester Fritz Library
web pages at any time of the day or night, may e-mail the Distance Education
Librarian, or dial the Library’s toll free number for help and assistance
will be provided.
Testimony from a distance education student:
“Thank you … May I also say that it is so comforting to have
someone like you to turn to who is so quick and knowledgeable about this
stuff … my anxieties just melt away!”
Janet Rex, Coordinator, Distance Education Services
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