Rensselaer Libraries

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Services to "Off-Campus" Users

Posted: Jan 27, 2009

Many services offered by the Rensselaer Libraries are also available to members of Rensselaer's Troy campus community when they are "off-site." Although geographical distance and the state-of-information technology affect how some services can be provided, the services attempt to be akin to those available to "on-site" users.

For registrants of Rensselaer's Professional and Distance Learning programs the Richard G. Folsom Library is the designated "home" library. For students, faculty and staff affiliated with Rensselaer at Hartford, the Cole Library serves as the "home" institution. "Home" libraries provide circulation, interlibrary loan, and reference services to their users. Although all Rensselaer users have circulation privileges at all Rensselaer libraries, service policies at Folsom and Hartford vary slightly.

A summary of available personal "remote" library services appears below followed by information about how to access the Research Libraries' Databases and other Electronic Publications.

Book Loans The Research Libraries will ship circulating materials from their collections to "off-campus" users via US Priority Mail, United Parcel or Federal Express delivery. Borrowers pay all shipping costs. You must contact the Folsom Circulation Desk by either email or phone to use this service. Books requested via ConnectNY cannot be forwarded. Library users may request books from either the Troy or Hartford campus libraries to be shipped to their "home" library without charge.
 
Interlibrary Loan Journal articles will be mailed or faxed for a small charge if electronic copies cannot be obtained. Books obtained from other libraries cannot be forwarded.
 
Electronic Resources Available to Professional & Distance Learning students and Troy campus faculty and students only. Hartford- affiliated students can access Troy campus resources only when they are enrolled in courses originating from Troy.

Off-Campus Access to Electronic Resources

Because licensing agreements generally restrict use of these resources either to "currently enrolled students" or "current employees," off-campus Rensselaer users must have active computing accounts in the Rensselaer Computing System (RCS) and be authenticated.

Students in Rensselaer's Professional and Distance Learning program (PD&L) or affiliated with another Rensselaer campus, (e.g. Hartford or Fairfax) who may be unfamiliar with RCS, can review general information about computing services at the Academic Computing home page or contact the Voorhees Computing Center's Help Desk directly (tel. 518-276-7777 or e-mail: consult@rpi.edu) for assistance.

Graduate students who have completed their course work and are working on their theses must file for "thesis credit" each semester with the Registrar to retain their "currently enrolled" status in order to keep RCS accounts active and to qualify for personal library services.

Using Other Libraries

Access policies vary greatly among libraries. Very few academic libraries offer researchers from other institutions full-fledged borrowing and use privileges. However, libraries that will let you in their front doors, will most likely also allow you on-site use of their research databases. In such cases, you will probably have to either use whatever e-mail facility is available to send data to your personal e-mail address, or locally download data to a floppy disk. Public libraries, especially those located in cities, should be able to provide you with personal interlibrary loan service comparable to Rensselaer's. Their staffs may be unfamiliar with technical publications; but if you can provide accurate citations, they should be able to obtain documents from the same sources just as fast as the Rensselaer Libraries.

Created by Irivng Stephens.

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