The second most popular way of aksing for research help (after face-to-face) is by e-mail. Regardless of which technology patrons use to contact the library, it's helpful to get their e-mail address if possible. This makes it much easier to follow up if you find something else useful to their enquiry after theiy're no longer connected.
E-mailing documents
One of the services we offer to distance students or staff/students/faculty who are having access problems is to send PDFs of documents that they are unable to obtain themselves. This could be because:
Note that the amount that may be sent is governed by Fair Dealing (typically a chapter or 10% from a book or one article from a journal issue).
To ensure that we're sending materials to someone from TWU, we will only send PDFs to mytwu or twu e-mail addresses.
Making Print Copies
Copying from Microforms
Alloway library's chat reference service is AskAway, a province-wide service provided by all the academic post-secondary libraries in BC. Two TWU librarians cover shifts on this service. Librarians also monitor the TWU feed on AskAway while they're at the Research Help Desk.
Telephone is useful for only brief, basic reference questions.
If necessary, transfer the call to the on-call reference librarian.
When sending links to library material that requires proxy authentication, it's important to ensure:
Example: