Accessing the University Libraries

You can access University Libraries resources either directly from the accounting guide page in your course or from the Penn State Libraries website.

Accessing the Accounting Guide through Library Resources in Course Navigation

The easiest option is to access the accounting guide through Library Resources in the Canvas course navigation as the links in the accounting guide will bring you directly into specific resources. 

Accessing Library Resources through the Penn State Libraries Website

You can also access these resources via the Penn State Libraries website. Once you have navigated to the Libraries main page, you will notice the following links near the top of the page: Services, Research, About, and Ask (see Figure 14.3). If you click on each of these headings, you will find a drop-down menu of additional selections. The same options are provided under similar headings toward the bottom of the home page. There may be some resources that are restricted, such as paid databases or journals, so you may need to log in with your Penn State WebAccess user ID and password to access to these items. Next, let’s look at the Find box in the center of the page.

 

Find (aka LionSearch)

The Find heading allows you to search the library resources (see Figure 14.3):

• Books, Articles and More searches the general catalog and searches almost all items in the library.
• Databases searches within the databases to which the school has subscriptions.
• E-Journals allows you to search journals that Penn State has access to in electronic format.
• Course Reserves is where you will go to access any materials that have been placed on reserve for your use as part of a course. These are often reference materials or portions of textbooks. You may search in this tab by course number, course name, instructor name, or name of resource on reserve.
• Site Search will search the library web pages.

Help for any of these resources is available by clicking on either the Ask a Librarian button (see Figure 14.3) or one of the links under the Ask a Librarian heading (see Figure 14.4).

 

Ask or Ask a Librarian

Ask gives you the option of e-mailing, starting a chat with, or phoning a librarian for help. The Ask a Librarian heading found at the bottom of the page has a list of options below it (see Figure 14.4), which mostly list different means of contacting a librarian for assistance. The last two, FAQs and Tutorials, are guides to the library resources. FAQs (or How Do I?...) is just what it sounds like: answers to the most frequently asked questions.

By following the Tutorials link, you will find many recorded tutorials about the library and services. However, I recommend that you view the library guides that are linked through the Penn State Online/World Campus libraries page.