BY MARINA ALONZO/STAFF WRITER
With tight class schedules and heavy workloads, tracking down the right information for research papers often can become a daunting task. Luckily, FIU’s librarians are here to help.
In a virtual event, FIU reference librarian April Lafferty demonstrated some time-saving techniques for navigating the main portal on the FIU library’s website.
FIU’s librarians suggest taking advantage of their chat widget as a straight-forward and reliable option for getting help from the library.
“It’s the easiest and fastest way to contact a librarian at FIU libraries,” said lafferty.
The chat widget will be green when a librarian is online from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 9a.m. to 6p.m. on Friday and Saturday.
Even outside of these hours, students can still submit questions through the chat, to be promptly answered the following morning via email.
FIU’s library is also offering reservations of Hotspots, webcams, and devices on their website under Devices on their homepage, with contactless pickup from both the Modesto A. Maidique and Biscayne Bay campuses.
Lafferty discussed reserving a book for virtual and remote students, and that the books will be at a contactless pickup location for books, devices, etc. on each campus that can be chosen by the student.
There will be a Request link when students search for books where students can begin choosing a pickup location to collect their books.
“I call it the Google of the library,” Lafferty said when covering the Discovery page for the library. She also said that it searches for books, articles, videos, and almost everything in the library.
The library has 18 “liaison” librarians that are dedicated to a specific subject for more in depth questions and their contact information can be found under the “Find” tab on the library homepage.
There is a link on the website called Library Services to Support Remote Learning which has lots of information on how to visit the library, and updates on the libraries’ operations during the pandemic.
This link can be found here.
The library’s FAQ section is the ultimate spot for those having trouble navigating the website or need help with reserving a book or device.
More information on the library can be found here.
There’s certainly a lot to learn about this topic. I love all
of the points you’ve made.