What types of assistance/resources can online students receive from UGA libraries?

When it comes to resources, what differs for distance learning students versus students on campus is when you need an article, book chapter or entire book the library only has in print. If you are off-campus, you can still get access in other ways if we have some extra notice, so keep this in mind when thinking about your project timeline. What you will do to get these items can depend on what it is, who owns it and whether you are in Georgia or elsewhere. We have more information about specific types of requests on our distance learning web pages, or you can contact us.

The University of Georgia has a large number of online resources (journals, ebooks and databases) and we recommend you bookmark our home page in their browsers since it is the best gateway to our online resources. Searching in Google is great for some things, but it often gives you links that are not customized for UGA’s subscriptions, so you may not be able to access a resource that UGA has actually paid for.

A great place to start is MultiSearch in the center of our home page. When you are off-campus it requires you to log in with your UGA MyID and leads you to many thousands of journal articles, but also brings in the descriptions of books we own. You can find something on almost any topic.

Years ago, library research used to involve spending lots of time with print journals and books. The internet and online databases have made many tasks simpler, but expanding our horizons has also brought challenges that can make research complex in new ways. Don’t feel that as a university student you should already know how to find everything you need.

For help with research, we have librarians who act as liaisons to each academic department in every college at UGA. If you’re not sure who your subject librarian is, or you have questions about accessing and requesting materials, call us at 706-542-3251, email us at mainref@uga.edu, or use the “Chat with a Librarian” link on the home page. 

What does your job involve as the distance librarian?

I serve as library liaison to the faculty and students of French in the Department of Romance Languages, as well as those in the Department of Linguistics. Recently, I added the Distance Learning Coordinator position to my responsibilities. In this role, I communicate with the Office of Online Learning and try to help our distance learners use library resources as much as possible in the way that on-campus students do.

What is your academic background?

I have undergraduate and graduate degrees in French, specifically French linguistics. When I was working on a French-related digital library project at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, I decided to take advantage of the well-regarded Library and Information Science school there to complete an additional degree that would make me a professional librarian. Later, I was offered a position as a Research and Instruction Librarian at UGA.