Faculty Library Guide

Physical Items – The library provides reserve collections for individual courses. See the library’s Reserves webpage to learn how to request these items for your courses.

- Related: Access and Checkout, Computers and Study Rooms, Copying and Printing, Physical Collections, Location and Hours

Electronic Items – The library provides electronic reserves through its online databases and electronic book collections. Often, these items are located in the library’s collections and linked in Blackboard courses. The library’s online resources usually require the use of a proxy server prefix to be added in front of the direct link (permalink or persistent link) to the resource:

https://saumag.idm.oclc.org/login?url=

Example: https://saumag.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=495588&site=ehost-live&scope=site

This link takes you to the ebook:
Cheryl Hanley-Maxwell, & Lana Collet-Klingenberg. (2011). Education. SAGE Publications, Inc.

- To learn more about linking to the library’s resources, see the library’s video tutorial: Linking to Magale Library’s Electronic Resources and library guide.
- Related: Access and Checkout

Interlibrary Loans (ILLs)

Current students, faculty, and staff of Southern Arkansas University may use Interlibrary Loan Services to obtain materials from other libraries. Response times from lending libraries vary; please allow up to two weeks for the delivery of materials. For more information or to make requests, please visit the library’s Interlibrary Loan Services webpage.

Library Description

The Magale Library is a centrally located learning resource center containing about 155,000 book volumes. The library has many comfortable study areas and study rooms. The library offers 217 desktop computers (75 in open labs, 25 in study rooms, and 117 in library instruction labs) for student usage. The library has three library instruction labs on the third floor. The library collection also includes 12,000 audiovisual pieces, 38,000 periodical microfilm and microfiche pieces, 360,000 government documents, current subscriptions to 85 periodicals, 212,000 e-books, over 116,000 online streaming academic videos, and online full-text access to over 48,000 periodical titles from 188 databases with indexing and abstracts for additional titles. The library website includes information literacy videos. Online access to library resources is available through the library homepage. Students can use a federated search service at the library’s website that will search most of Magale’s electronic resources simultaneously. The resources at the Magale Library are used to prepare students in all academic areas for their intellectual growth, individual enrichment, skill development, and meaningful career preparation.

Library Instruction

The library staff provides instruction in a variety of forms, including general how-to’s through advanced levels of specialized topics. Instruction is provided in-person and online using a variety of media.

Faculty often link to Magale’s library guides and video tutorials in their Blackboard courses when assigning student research projects. These are the most commonly assigned to help students begin their research assignments, found on Magale’s Video Tutorials webpage under Research Basics:

The World of Information: Information Literacy, Libraries, and Their Impact on Students

Learn about the World of Information! This tutorial introduces the basic concepts of information literacy and their impact on students. The tutorial also includes a discussion of the types of libraries, their resources, and how students’ knowledge and use of these resources affect their academic endeavors.

Determining A Resource’s Quality

Learn about the importance of evaluating information resources! This tutorial introduces the basic concepts of scholarly works, including how to locate and evaluate resources for quality.

Using Keywords and Boolean Searches

This short video tutorial describes the basics of determining keywords and using Boolean searches. Often, these search skills are more effective when searching library resources than typical Google search skill approaches.

How to Find Books, Videos, Magazines, and Other Materials within Magale Library

Learn how to find resources within Magale Library! This tutorial introduces the basic concepts of searching and locating resources within Magale’s in-library collections.

How to Find E-Books, E-Articles, Videos, & Other Materials within Magale’s Electronic Collections

Learn how to find resources within Magale’s electronic collections! This tutorial introduces the basic concepts of searching and locating resources within Magale databases and digital libraries. Attention is given to on and off-campus access of these resources.

Citing Resources (MLA 9th / APA 7th)

This is a video tutorial with details and explanations for citing and referencing commonly used library resources. Researchers sometimes find it confusing to understand how to document their resources in their work. This tutorial focuses on MLA 9th edition and APA 7th edition writing styles and attempts to demystify some of the terminology and rules of its core components and applications.