You’ve probably heard that the library remains open to student use during the COVID-19 pandemic, but did you know there are certain services you can use to stay safe?

• Don’t come in unnecessarily

Need a book from the library but don’t want to come in without knowing you can have it for sure? You can tell if the book you want is still in the library by doing a search at consortiumlibrary.org. Once you find your item in the list of results, click on it.

As you can see by the red arrows, there are two key pieces of information. First, you can see which library the book is available at under the “Location” column. Your UAA or APU ID will get you into the UAA/APU Consortium Library, so be sure your item is listed there.

Second, you can tell if the item is available on the shelf in the information to the right of the location. If someone else has the item, it will say “Checked Out” with a due date next to it.

If your item is checked out, try searching the Ebooks or Alaska’s Digital Library!

• Have items waiting for you

If the item you want is checked out by someone else, or if you want to be sure it will be waiting for you at the Circulation Desk when you visit, you can place a hold. 

To place a hold, check to see if there’s a “Place Hold” button in the upper right hand corner of the item’s catalog entry. If there is, click on it. It will ask you to provide your UAA ID number and PIN,  and then ask where you want to pick up your item. Make sure it delivers to the UAA/APU Consortium Library. If you don’t know your PIN, contact the Circulation Desk at 786-1871. 

You will receive an email when your item is ready for pick-up. You may then head to the Circulation Desk to check out your item. Don’t forget your ID to get into the building.

Stay healthy, my friends!

The Library is still open to students with a valid UA or APU ID. If you don’t have a UAA ID, we can help you get one, for more information see the COVID-19 update page. The library hours have changed and there are two sets of hours now: building hours and online research assistance hours. Both are on the Library Services Update page.

We have laptops along with earbuds available for use within the building for attending classes, and we have laptops that can be checked out to take home. These are available at the Main Circulation Desk. The Library can provide Document Delivery services for some materials, and students can check-out books from the Library.

For research help from a Librarian, use the Library’s Ask Us service on the library website. The Consortium Library has moved to online Information and Research Services. All the virtual ways to contact us still exist, but we do not have librarians at the first floor Research Help Desk. On the Library’s website is an Ask Us link which provides access to librarians via chat, email, texting, and online appointments.

Please contact Archives and Special Collections directly if you have need of their collections or research services.

The Library has a page within University of Alaska’s Blackboard  to make library access easier. There is also a Library link within your course in Blackboard and there are resources on this Guides page on our website. These pages are designed to provide more direct access to relevant Library resources. For many more resources use QuickSearch on our main page or the databases, including our ebook collections. The Library is available on the the APU website as well.

If you need any assistance finding information or research, please don’t hesitate to contact the Virtual Reference Desk. Or you may contact the subject librarian for your program for research help. They can meet with you via online means such as Zoom, Google Hangouts, etc. Use this link to make an appointment .

Let us know how we can help!

Learning Express by Ebsco (the same company that brings you Academic Search Premiere) is an amazing resource offered through the Alaskan Library Network that can help you excel in all your classes and even meet personal goals.

Learning Express is a wealth of tutorials and instructional materials on a wide array of subjects. From brushing up on computer basics, to improving your conversation Spanish skills, to finding scholarships: Learning Express has it all. To access Learning Express, visit our page https://consortiumlibrary.org/, and then select the Databases link under the “Find Books & Articles” header. From the Database list select L, and then click on “Learning Express.”

The resources Learning Express offers are broken down into ten centers. Here are a few that are especially useful for students.

–Career Preparation offers assistants in prepping for career specific exams, from nursing and social work to air traffic control. It also includes guidance on work place skills.

–Job Acceleration helps match you with your dream career by providing information on different occupations and can even help locate jobs and internships in different fields, as well as tools to get hired. It also includes a scholarship finder.

–College Students provides tools to brush up on and advance in fields including math, reading, writing and science. It offers preparation for college placement exams, graduate entrance exams, and CLEP exams in subjects such as American history, Government practices, literature, and humanities.

-Student Success Tools includes college level resources to improve your classroom success, keep you organized and help you reach personal goals.

–Computer Skills Center, whether you just want to learn the basics, want to navigate the internet better, or are looking to learn how to create computer graphics and illustration, or dive into your computers operating systems, this is a great place to start.

Have you heard of SLED? It stands for the Statewide Library Electronic Doorway and houses some amazing information resources for all Alaskans to access and use! If you haven’t already, we encourage you to take a look at some of the great resources they have available here: https://lam.alaska.gov/sled.

A few new resources have been added for access through the summer, including Audio Book Cloud, eBook Public Library Collection, and Business Source Ultimate. You can also find resources like Learning Express, which provides test preparation and study materials on a variety of topics. Access them here: https://lam.alaska.gov/databases/a_z

Don’t forget that if you need any help finding information or resources, the Reference Librarians are still here to help – virtually! Check out our previous post for ways to contact us.

When it’s hard to get to the library, it’s a good time to take a look at some ebooks that you can get to from home – you can find all of these works by searching on their titles in QuickSearch on our home page.

Now, I’m talking Pandemic City here – I’ll cover more distracting titles another time, but these ebooks will help in better understanding pandemics that are thankfully past, all-too-present, and (sigh) yet to come.  Most of them are firmly about one kind of pandemic or another, but others address pandemics as being only part of a larger context of potential disasters that could occur, just in case COVID-19 hasn’t provided enough excitement for you already.  Anyway, while we’re all a little sharper on pandemics than we were not all that long ago, good basic information never hurts:

* Pandemics: What Everyone Needs To Know – Doherty, Peter C. Oxford, 2013

* Pandemic Influenza: Emergency Planning And Community Preparedness – ed. by Jeffrey R. Ryan CRC Press, 2008

Of course, we have an excellent work on everybody’s favorite plague:

* Encyclopedia Of The Black Death – Byrne, Joseph P. ABC-CLIO, 2012

And to paraphrase Tina Turner, what’s politics got to do with it?

* When Science And Politics Collide: The Public Interest At Risk – Schneider, Robert O. Praeger, 2018

COVID-19 is certainly not the only pandemic humanity has ever faced; some authors look to the past:

* Flu Hunter: Unlocking The Secrets Of A Virus – Webster, Robert G. Otago University Press, 2018

* The Great Manchurian Plague Of 1910-1911: The Geopolitics Of An Epidemic Disease – Summers, William C. Yale, 2012

* Africa In The Time Of Cholera: A History Of Pandemics From 1815 To The Present – Echenberg, Myron. Cambridge, 2011

* Plows, Plagues, And Petroleum: How Humans Took Control Of Climate – Ruddiman, William F. Princeton, 2005

* The Pandemic Perhaps: Dramatic Events In A Public Culture Of Danger – Caduff, Carlo. California, 2015

While other authors look to the future, at a somewhat different definition of Alvin Toffler’s phrase ‘Future Shock’:

* Humanity On A Tightrope: Thoughts On Empathy, Family, And Big Changes For A Viable Future – Paul R. Ehrlich and Robert E. Ornstein Rowman & Littlefield, 2010

* Global Catastrophes And Trends: The Next 50 Years – Smil, Vaclav. MIT, 2008

* Megadisasters: The Science Of Predicting The Next Catastrophe – Diacu, Florin. Princeton, 2009

* Germ Wars: The Politics Of Microbes And America’s Landscape Of Fear – Armstrong, Melanie. California, 2017

I’ll finish with a couple of good print volumes in case you find yourself actually in the Consortium Library.  First is a good overall work:

* REF WA13.E564 2008, v.1 and 2     Encyclopedia Of Pestilence, Pandemics, And Plagues – ed. by Joseph P. Byrne Greenwood, 2008

And this last one is one good for nursing students, with one chapter about emerging infectious diseases and pandemics:

* WC100.W38 2012    Netter’s Infectious Diseases – [ed.] by Elaine C. Jong and Dennis L. Stevens Elsevier, 2011

Still, as a postscript, this has been such a serious subject for piling one difficult title on top of another that I can’t help but leave you with a diverting link to some amazing photographs that have – I promise! – absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with coronavirus, courtesy of the BBC:

Antarctic Seal Wins Top Prize
https://www.bbc.com/news/in-pictures-52007548