Gaining access is simply a matter of logging in. This identifies you as part of our community. Here's a direct link to the login screen. Once you're in, you will see a menu with links leading to all the online collections.

This three-minute online tutorial offers more detailed instructions to help you log in. For tips on how to use EBSCO itself, see these basic and advanced tutorials.

Call the Distance Education Help Desk at 872-2598 or 872-2582 for immediate help during business hours. Or you may be able to get your login information with this online tool. Unfortunately we librarians don't have authority to create passwords for that. Sorry.

Each library except Nursing has the APA, MLA, and Turabian style guides as well as The Chicago Manual of Style. The most recent editions will ordinarily be at the Reference Desk. Those books are the last word on formatting papers, but several websites do an excellent job of illustrating the most important points of the major styles. Some can automatically generate properly formatted citations for you. We link to the better ones on our Research Help page under the heading Citation Assistance.

Most likely at the Reserves Desk. There is an online tool for finding what's available there: you can search using the name of your instructor or of your course.

Items at the Reserves Desk are lent for two-hour periods so they can be available to a lot of students. You'll need your STC identification card to borrow them. Reserve materials cannot leave the premises, but the libraries all have photocopy machines in case you want to take your reading with you.

That's unlikely. You can check our catalog, but libraries rarely have current textbooks and ours is no exception.

The P.A.S.S. program at STC helps many qualifying students obtain textbooks. Here is a description of that program along with application materials.

Some instructors using costly texts do put a copy at the library Reserves Desk mentioned above in the answer to "My professor said...". And sometimes you can find earlier editions of a course text on our Donation shelves. Ask in the library and we'll show you where.

We have nearly thirty thousand of them that you can read at any Internet computer. When you're off campus you'll need to log in. There are two ways of doing so:

If you don't yet have a free NetLibrary account, log in here through STC's proxy server. You'll have full use of the e-book collection, but taking a moment to create an account, using the link right above the star in the upper-right corner, brings important benefits.

With an account, you can simply go to www.netlibrary.com to use the books. What's more, you can build a Favorites list for quick access to books you'd like to see again, and you can write and save notes to attach to pages that you read.

If you're not able to get that information from your instructor or a classmate, a good way to find what textbooks are needed for a class is through the bookstore's site at www.stc.bkstore.com. Look under the Textbook tab near the top. A helpful online tool there can help you pinpoint the required texts. You can also try calling the bookstore at 688-2075.

Ask at your library for an intra-campus loan request form. If the item is available, we'll bring it to your campus library as quickly as possible - typically in one to three working days.

We'd love to hear about it. Send this online purchase suggestion form to our collection development librarian who chooses and buys the materials for our libraries.

It’s easy to do that in our online catalog. The my account feature enables you to see what you have checked out and when each item is due. There is a Renew link that you can use to get more time with your books if they haven’t been requested by another borrower.

You will need to know your Library ID and your PIN in order to check your account. Your ID is your STC “A” number if you’re a student, your email handle if you’re faculty or staff, or your card number if you’re a Community User. The PIN might be the final four characters of your ID, and you can easily change it to anything you want.

Don’t know your PIN? Just visit any library and bring some identification. We’ll be happy to get you started managing your account from home.