Library Closures on August 13 2019

We’re going to be closed August 13 for Staff Learning on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. Thank you for your understanding as we learn to serve our community even better.

Not finding it in the Library? We will try to fill the void!

Can’t find what you are looking for? It’s happened to everyone at one time or another - a book or resource is just not in the library catalogue. Fortunately, there are several options available to you!

Quite often, the resource (sometimes an article) can be found by our Interlibrary Loans team.
Hint: If you are searching for articles, the place to find full-text is to click on “Get It!”. From there we suggest you search Google for free access first, and if you still cannot find the article then place an Interlibrary Loan request.

The Libraries' Course Textbook Initiative is another option which was conceived to increase student access to textbooks and offset their costs. If the book you seek is required for the course and costs more than $50 it will be made available in the Course Materials area. They may be borrowed for 2 hours during library hours.

If you can’t find it or your textbook is recommended or optional, you can request that we purchase it:
Students: submit a request for purchase  / Instructors: submit a Course materials / Reading List Request

Interested in finding out if your course textbook is available to borrow? Search Course Materials.
Questions about this service? Email: textbook@ualberta.ca

Recommend a Purchase:  If the item you are looking for is missing from our catalogue, then feel free to recommend a purchase and our Monograph Acquisition Team will try to get it for you, whether from Canada, or across the seas! Please do so using our Recommend a Purchase form. 

Should you require more information or assistance please Ask us!

Vous pouvez lire cet article en français sur notre Biblioblogue :  2019/07/vous-ne-le-trouvez-pas-dans-la.html

Let us introduce you to... Kaitlyn, Sarah, Kathy, Carol!

Staff profiles tell the story of an organization. Here at the University of Alberta Libraries, this is ours...

Meet Kaitlyn, Sarah, Kathy & Carol!
Kaitlyn Hill, Sarah Chomyc, Kathy Urban and Carol Rodgers make up our Monograph Acquisitions Team.

We are all very grateful that our team has been recognized in this fashion and consider this very positive feedback to the work we do every day! The award itself will serve as a reminder of what we’ve accomplished in the past year, and as an incentive to continue to work together to provide the best service possible to our Library and its users.

What does a monograph acquisition team do day to day?
A large part of our day is taken up by ordering, but it is more complicated than it might look at first glance, as we order many obscure items. The ordering process is more like detective work as we try to find a vendor that sells the requested item, and we end up ordering from all over the world. We can spend a day ordering from vendors in Alberta, Norway, and India all in one day! Other things we do are more behind the scenes tasks that bring materials to the area libraries, such as checking in periodicals, and helping staff and patrons troubleshoot problems with electronic resources. We also open the mail, which involves testing out the puppets and robots that we order! Working on the monograph acquisition team is really a challenging and exciting position, and often a new surprise pops up every day!

You must have some neat things coming through acquisitions. Any summer reading recommendations you can share with us?
Yikes!  We’ve been too busy ordering and haven’t had time to read anything to recommend. We have been testing out robots and puppets instead. However, we have been ordering some books for the Don’t Judge a Book By Its Cover project, so we definitely suggest checking some of those titles out once the event begins.

Check out our previous 2017 and 2018 Don’t Judge a Book By Its Cover events.

What are your plans for the trophy?
We will most likely purchase a grand trophy case made of marble from Italy, 24k gold handles, with proper air ventilation. Just kidding. It's currently sitting on top of Carol's desk hutch which provides a great vantage point for us all to admire it and remind ourselves to keep working hard to better our patrons’ experiences with the University Libraries!


Feel free to recommend a purchase for anything you find missing from our catalogue, and our Monograph Acquisition Team will try to get it for you, whether from Canada, internationally, or across seas😃👍