Landman Library: An Invaluable Resource
Everyone knows about Landman Library. Situated by Heinz Hall, our library is a sanctuary for many students. And I’m lucky enough to work there, in the Inter-Library Loans department.
Rather than working in the front of the library as a clerk, I work in the back, processing incoming and outgoing inter-library loans requests, which involves two main pieces: finding libraries that have books/articles/etc. that Arcadia students request but our library doesn’t own, and delivering requested resources to other libraries. I also process and shelve books and periodicals, among other things.
Working behind the scenes allows me to become intimately familiar with library resources that students may not know about. Our library is truly an underutilized resource and offers far more than people may think. Here are a few of them for you to take advantage of as soon as possible!
Our library recommends Zotero as a research tool. This software aids in the collection, organization, and citing of sources, such as for academic papers. If you have the Google Chrome extension, you can right click on a source and instantly save it to the Zotero folder of your liking and autofill the source’s info to make a citation. If the source is from the web, clicking on it in Zotero will open it in your browser. When you have all your sources gathered, you can simply click a button to automatically generate a bibliography.
This, in my opinion, is far easier than citation tools like EasyBib, which not only have a plethora of ads, but require you to copy and paste links, fill in a lot of information manually, and often do not cite properly. These services also often don’t have a variety of citation options and don’t let you save or organize your sources. Zotero helps you organize your sources by folder and also makes collaborative folders if you’re working on something with a classmate.
But wait, there’s more. Some students may think that if they can’t find a book or journal article at our library, there’s no hope. But it’s not true, and that’s where I come in. Whether you need an article for a paper or a book to read during your down time, we can surely secure it for you. All you have to do is fill out this request form. After that, we search for libraries in our system that have what you want. We ask the library for the requested material, and deliver it to you via email (or it can be picked up at the library, if it’s a copy of a book). It’s genuinely such a useful tool I didn’t utilize until I started working at the library. For example, I really wanted a book that retailed for about $30, out of my price range. I decided to put an ILL request in, and within a few days, a public library in the state got the book to me. The fact that no library in the country has the material you want is so rare, so you should give it a shot!
Something I very rarely see students accessing is our large collection of periodicals. The ground floor of Landman holds rolling stacks of periodicals, from mainstream magazines like The Economist, Consumer Reports, and TIME (which we often get new issues of regularly), to industry-specific journals such as Foot and Ankle International, Journal of Business Ethics, The American Poetry Review, and more. You can search our collection electronically via our Journal Finder.
Lastly, our librarians are always available to answer any questions you may have. They’re an invaluable resource. I’ve reached out to them on several occasions, specifically for help correctly citing a source, and they got back to me not only incredibly quickly, but kindly. If you feel like you’re stuck in a dead-end, reach out to our lovely librarians and they’ll be sure to help you.
I hope you can see just how important our library is beyond checking out books, and I wish I knew about everything they offered earlier. Do yourself a favor and check it out while you’re still here, whether it be securing a book you don’t have the cash for, checking out our wealth of knowledge in the periodicals stacks, or utilizing our ILL services.
