Off-Campus Library Services is a unit set up to serve rural UAF students and faculty who do not have access to appropriate information resources in their town or village. We work in support of The College of Rural Alaska and The Center for Distance Education and Independent Learning.

For Students

We can supply your information needs for the courses you are taking. For example, if a research paper is required in the teleconference or correspondence course that you are taking, you can contact us, explain your information need, and we will send library materials to you so that you can write your paper.

For Faculty

We support your teaching and research needs. We are happy to assist by providing research services and materials that will help in course preparation and faculty-related research, and to provide library instruction via audioconference.

What You Can Expect From Us

The Off-Campus Library Services unit is committed to fast, efficient, and accurate responses to the people requesting our service. If you are working on a twenty-page paper, you will receive more material that if you are writing a two-page paper. The type of material you receive (books or photocopies of articles) depends a lot on your topic and what we find when we do the search. If you are not satisfied with what you receive, please let us know. Occasionally a topic will be so obscure or so complex to search that is goes beyond the amount of time that we can allot to it. If this should occur, we will contact you and ask if you have an alternative topic.

What We Expect From You

When you contact us by telephone, we will ask routine questions such as your name, mailing address, telephone and FAX number if you have them, course name, and instructor. We will also ask for your social security number so that we can set up a library checkout record for you. (We check out the books to you if we send books).

We will then ask questions about what you need. These questions are especially important if we are doing the searching for you, because we want to search for and send exactly what you need. Before you call, it might be helpful for you to write down a sentence or two description the topic you are working on.

If you contact us by mail, e-mail, or fax, please try to provide information to the questions we would ask you via the phone (mentioned in the previous two paragraphs).

If you reach our answering machine, please leave a message with your name, how and when we can reach you best, and some idea regarding your information need.

Last, but definitely not least, we ask that you contact us as soon as possible with your topic!