Services

Reference

Hours, e-Reference books, e-Journals, Journal titles: transforming full title <--> abbreviated title, Reference hours at other Purdue libraries, Circulation periods at other Purdue libraries, more.

Renew books

Now you can renew books you've got checked out online.  From any library page click on the "Your Library Account" link at the top; login (using your last name and Purdue ID number).  You will see a list of all the books you currently have checked out.  Each entry will have a check-box next to it; click on the box(s), and renew your books!  Be sure to logout when you are done.  Note:  this page will also list books that you've requested from another user (recalled).

Checking out books and journals

At the Life Sciences Library books may be checked out for 3 weeks.  Journals (bound or unbound) may be checked out for no longer than 2 hours.

Document Delivery

Need a book or journal article that Purdue does not own?

Submit a document delivery request.  We'll find a library at another institution that has what you need.  Books are usually "loaned", while articles are usually photocopied. 

Note:  All Purdue affiliates may submit document delivery requests for items not available on campus.

For more information about document delivery, please refer to the Interlibrary Loan Service borrowing site.

Reserves

Students:  Find out what's on Reserve for your class:
In addition to being able to search the online Catalog for books in the general collection by author, title, subject, keywords, etc., you can also search for materials that a professor may have put on "Reserve" for a particular class.  These may be materials from the general collection, personal copies of books owned by the professor,  photocopies of articles, old tests, etc.

  • From any library page, select "Course Reserves"
  • Search by instructor, course, department, or section.

Professors:  Put a book on Reserve for your class:
If you want to have a book (library-owned or your personal copy), journal article, or other material put on Reserve for a class, please let us know by filling in a Reserves Submission Form.  With a Purdue ID, materials placed on Reserve may be checked out for 2 hours (or overnight, if checked out within 2 hours of closing).

Please go to our Reserves page for more information about the type of material we can put on Reserves, copyright guidelines, etc.

Education & Training

  • Reference Hours in the Life Sciences Library:  8-5, Monday - Friday, or by appointment. 
    Drop in, or give us a call (49-42910) and ask to speak with one of the librarians.
  • Ask a librarian for a one-on-one training session. We'll work with you to identify the best resources for your research, help you build a comprensive search strategy, help you set up SDIs, etc. For one-on one sessions please contact:

  • Faculty: Invite a librarian to teach your class how to find the information they need.  We often create special flyers or webpages tailored to fit the needs of specific classes.
  • Faculty: Submit your "library exercises" to a librarian for review, prior to the assignment. This allows us to be better prepared for you students when they come in.
    • Please send your assignments to Monica Kirkwood (49-47873; monicacu@purdue.edu) at the Life Sciences Library, Lilly Hall.
    • We'll be glad to recommend additional resources for your students.
    • Additionally, prior knowledge about your goals for an assignment allows us to provide better guidance to your students when they appear at our Reference Desk. 
  • Visit the Purdue Libraries' Instruction page, for yet more information and resources!

Recommend a purchase.

Students and professors are urged to let us know if there are books or journals they'd recommend that we purchase for the Life Sciences Library.  Please send a note to Vicki Killion, Life Sciences Librarian (vkillion@purdue.edu).

Support for ProCite, Reference Manager or EndNote.

Many professors and graduate students are using the database management programs EndNote, ProCite or Reference Manager to create a personal databases of citations to books and journal articles in their research & teaching interest area(s).  Newer versions of these programs allow the user to connect directly from the program to locally mounted databases such as the Purdue Catalog and the OVID databases (e.g., Current Contents, Medline). Find here the files or instructions for modifying your program so you can do this.

Instructions for downloading the ICA client.

Currently some e-resources are not available via a web subscription.  In order to provide campus-wide access to these, the Purdue Libraries and PUCC have set up several WTS (Windows terminal servers).  You will need to download a sort of "plugin", that will work with your browser, to access these resources.
Among the titles of interest to life scientists that are available via WTS:

Patents

The Siegesmund Engineering Library receives current issues of U.S. Patents and maintain collections of earlier-issued patents (1950-date). CASSIS (Classification and Search SupportInformation System) and other CD-ROM products for searching patent and trademark information are available. Access the Engineering Libraries patent page for more information about patent searching at Purdue. See, also, the U.S. Patent Office [USPTO] site, to search for patent information and get the full-text of U.S. patents back to 1976.

SDI Auto Alerts

What is SDI?  Well, SDI stands for "Selective Dissemination of Information".  Still unclear?  Well, actually, SDI is a pretty exciting feature.  With it, you can create a search in a database, and then request that the search be automatically re-run at regular intervals for you.  Results of the search will be sent to your email address.  Only new records that have been added to the database during the interval between SDIs will be sent to you.  SDI's may be created for any OVID or SilverPlatter database.  Most folks create SDIs in the Current Contents database, since it is updated weekly (most other databases are updated monthly or quarterly).  Contact a librarian for help creating one.

Last update: August 22, 2008

Prepared by: Monica Kirkwood (monicacu@purdue.edu)