The Online Library is vital component for collegiate success in the University and future work in the Information Age. This state-of-the-art facility is linked from every classroom and available 24/7. Designed in part as a teaching facility, the Online Library gives our students advanced Information Literacy skills and support at the cutting edge of modern Web-based research. Its primary role, however, is the provision of electronic resources for research and classroom use. The University’s library focuses on scholarly electronic books and professional journals from the Deep Web. These costly materials are vital for college-level work, but unavailable directly through Google or the other Open Web search engines. Equally important, the facility provides students with controlled access to millions of pages of “trusted” resources from the Open Web.

Those new to virtual libraries or having problems are provided an array of help mechanisms. This includes “Getting Started,” “About the Library,” and “Troubleshooting” pages - as well as e-mail links to professional librarians, textbook support, and technical services. Another section provides news on recent additions, trials, and problem alerts. Advanced researchers and returning students concentrate on the information resources on the remainder of the page. The interface is designed for transparency and “one-stop shopping.” It clusters resources in dedicated information suites:

• Article Databases connects to digital runs of over 27,000 scholarly journals. The latter range from the general libraries of EBSCO and ProQuest to specialized collections on criminal justice, current/international affairs, environmental matters, intelligence, the law, public health, psychology, and even sports business and poetry.
• Books/E-Books offers an Online Catalog with a limited number of print and growing collection of 80,000 electronic books. The column also offers services interlibrary loan requests, as well as special pages dedicated to research in archival repositories, dissertations, government documents, military libraries, and hundreds of thousands of texts on the Open Web.
• Department Study Portals are your dedicated research launch zones. Conveniently combining Open and Deep Web resources, these portals are developed with faculty and specially tailored to the specific needs of each field of study.
• Open Web Resources: Professionally selected “trusted” Web sites for Open Access e-books and scholarly journals—as well as access and training for research in archives and government documents.
• Tutorial Center features a training section on Information Literacy and collegiate writing. It includes a selection of our best student papers as study guides. You will find a dedicated Career Library and resume assistance. In addition, the Center provides links to MyDropBox software with its automated plagiarism checker and, especially, Smarthinking, which provides students with free access to individual tutors.