Take advantage of the great online resources from your public library by signing up for free accounts.
The St. Catharines and Thorold Public Libraries extend free memberships to Brock students in the two communities.
Popular magazines, audio books, streaming videos and music are available for you borrow with your public library card, and offer the perfect complement to our more scholarly collections.
Join today!
Collaboration, Community, Students
Categories: Main
Brock students, faculty and staff are conscientious when it comes to returning their library books. Indeed, “how can I return my books” is a frequent question to libhelp@brocku.ca.
While it’s not necessary to return items at this time (we’ve renewed regular loans to January 7, 2021), there are procedures in place for users who want to safely return their books.
Please follow these steps:
1. Complete the self-scan survey prior to coming to campus.
2. When you arrive, enter at the Rankin Family Pavilion (base of the Schmon Tower).
Note: Wearing a mask or face covering is required as per Brock’s campus-wide policy.
3. Tap your Brock ID card at the Welcome Desk.
Note: If you don’t have a Brock ID card, follow these instructions to submit a photo and have a card created for you. In the meantime, give your Brock ID number to the staff at the desk.
4. Head to the book drop slot just to the left of the stairs to Brock Central and deposit your items.
Your books will be quarantined for 7 days prior to check-in. Learn more about the quarantine period and a mail-in option for returns (navigate to the returns section).
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2020
In the two weeks since we posted our What’s New? message (below), a number of updates are already available.
The Library Pickup Service which premiered in July for faculty, staff and graduate students, has been expanded to all current Brock undergraduates!
Earlier this summer the Brock News reported on the Pickup Service and explained a little about the process. If you are interested in requesting books from our collection (which aren’t available online), the process is straightforward. Simply sign-in with your Brock credentials to Omni, the Library’s database, search for the item you want and click the ‘Request for pickup’ link. When your book is ready, you’ll receive an email with information about pickup logistics. You can learn more about the service and eligible items on the Library Services and Resources Amid COVID-19 page.
The Map, Data & GIS Library is pleased to announce that atlases and books in their collection are also eligible for the Pickup Service. As the MDGL will remain closed for the fall term, returning items is not necessary. However, if you want to return Map books and atlases, please use the drop box in the Schmon Tower lobby. A 7 day quarantine period is in place before books are checked in.
In coordination with the Digital Scholarship Lab, a number of “hands-on” ArcGIS Online workshops are accessible to anyone with a computer and an internet connection. We utilize ZOOM technology to offer these workshops and registration is via ExperienceBU.
Pop back to our website and check our Social Media channels as, no doubt, we’ll soon have more good news to share.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 28, 2020
What’s new? We’re so glad you asked. Our team has been hard at work refining Library online services and supports to serve you. We encourage you to keep up with changes to our usual services and resources by reading our Library Services and Resources Amid COVID-19 webpage.
If you are new to Brock – in any capacity, we invite you to peruse our Discover Your Library orientation site.
Over the summer, Access Services staff developed and rolled out a print materials pickup service to instructors, graduate students and post doctoral researchers. Keep an eye on our website for details about the expansion of this service to additional user groups this term.
While not brand new, we are pleased to announce the library scanning service has resumed. Open to all in the Brock community, making a request for a pdf scan of a chapter from a print book or journal article is easier than ever. Learn more about requesting a scan via Omni.
Instructors at Brock are now able to self-upload their course reserve readings to Ares. Step-by-step instructions as well as video demonstrations are available for faculty interested in trying this out.
When the Brock University Smart Start Team moved their programming online, we followed suit and offered our Top 10 Tips for new students. As orientation continues, all Library extra-curricular learning opportunities are posted on ExperienceBU. Among the myriad listings, we invite you to embark on your own Library Quest, take a mid-week Library Yoga break, develop your citation management competencies with Zotero, and get introduced to Vector Design for CNC.
Brock University Library is now a member partner of HathiTrust and has signed onto its Emergency Temporary Access Service (ETAS). ETAS provides electronic read-only access to approximately 30% of our in-copyright print collections. In addition, over 4 million worldwide public domain items already accessible in HT. The service is available to all current Brock University faculty, students, and staff. Learn more.
For the immediate future, the Archives & Special Collections is closed to the public. However, the staff of the Archives is still working. Direct any questions or needs to archives@brocku.ca. They will do their best to assist you. You can also find many of their digitized materials in the Brock University Digital Repository.
During the pandemic, Archives staff have been creating digital exhibits featuring some of the collections and records that we have in the Archives. See some of the rich history that we have in our collections.
In March, the Archives and Digital Scholarship Lab Teams started to collect stories, questions/answers, photos, videos, and other materials that chronicle the pandemic in the Niagara area. To contribute to this project and have your experiences and thoughts preserved into the future, go to our COVID-19 in Niagara website and add your stories.
The Digital Scholarship Lab in conjunction with the Map, Data & GIS Library invite you to learn from their expertise with their Fall Workshop Series. In addition, both the DSL and MDGL invite you to get ‘hands-on’ by plotting your hometown and entering the Data Visualization Contest.
Our Makerspace Team invite you to take a virtual tour of their new facilities. Workshops will continue online for the fall term and their website features a new FAQ.
Stay up-to-date by keeping an eye on the website and our social media channels – Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for any changes or expansion in services as the term progresses.
The Library Team wish you all the best for a successful start to the fall term.
Collections, Digital Scholarship Lab, Our Collections, Services, Students
Categories: Main
Due to unsustainable rising costs, Brock University Library will be switching our access model for Kanopy streaming video service to mediated mode beginning on September 8.
Until now, Kanopy has been in “Patron Driven Acquisition” mode. In this model, the entire Kanopy catalogue was open, but after a certain amount of viewing of a title, a 1-year lease of the film costing $150 was automatically triggered for the library.
Kanopy costs have grown steadily over the years, but have increased dramatically since March 2020, finally leading us to make the difficult decision to mediate access.
What does mediated access mean for you?
Good news! We still have access to thousands more films:
The library subscribes to several other film collections, covering a breadth of content including popular movies, Canadian documentaries, and theatre productions. A full list can be found on our new Streaming Video page.
Brand new in August 2020, the library has added Audio Cine Films to these collections, which includes films from studios like DreamWorks Animation, Pixar Animated Studios, Walt Disney, and more.
Our sincere thanks for your understanding as we make this change
We understand how popular streaming video has become, and how valuable it is as a learning resource, particularly in our challenging COVID-19 circumstances. We regret having to make this change. However, Patron Driven Acquisition and its growing costs are not sustainable. Mediating access will allow us to sustain our budget, and ensure we continue to have the capacity to lease Kanopy and other streaming video titles for purposes that need them most: course instruction and focused research.
Our Collections
Categories: Main
What’s new? We’re so glad you asked. Our team has been hard at work refining Library online services and supports to serve you. We encourage you to keep up with changes to our usual services and resources by reading our Library Services and Resources Amid COVID-19 webpage.
If you are new to Brock – in any capacity, we invite you to peruse our Discover Your Library orientation site.
Over the summer, Access Services staff developed and rolled out a print materials pickup service to instructors, graduate students and post doctoral researchers. Keep an eye on our website for details about the expansion of this service to additional user groups this term.
While not brand new, we are pleased to announce the library scanning service has resumed. Open to all in the Brock community, making a request for a pdf scan of a chapter from a print book or journal article is easier than ever. Learn more about requesting a scan via Omni.
Instructors at Brock are now able to self-upload their course reserve readings to Ares. Step-by-step instructions as well as video demonstrations are available for faculty interested in trying this out.
When the Brock University Smart Start Team moved their programming online, we followed suit and offered our Top 10 Tips for new students. As orientation continues, all Library extra-curricular learning opportunities are posted on ExperienceBU. Among the myriad listings, we invite you to embark on your own Library Quest, take a mid-week Library Yoga break, develop your citation management competencies with Zotero, and get introduced to Vector Design for CNC.
Brock University Library is now a member partner of HathiTrust and has signed onto its Emergency Temporary Access Service (ETAS). ETAS provides electronic read-only access to approximately 30% of our in-copyright print collections. In addition, over 4 million worldwide public domain items already accessible in HT. The service is available to all current Brock University faculty, students, and staff. Learn more.
For the immediate future, the Archives & Special Collections is closed to the public. However, the staff of the Archives is still working. Direct any questions or needs to archives@brocku.ca. They will do their best to assist you. You can also find many of their digitized materials in the Brock University Digital Repository.
During the pandemic, Archives staff have been creating digital exhibits featuring some of the collections and records that we have in the Archives. See some of the rich history that we have in our collections.
In March, the Archives and Digital Scholarship Lab Teams started to collect stories, questions/answers, photos, videos, and other materials that chronicle the pandemic in the Niagara area. To contribute to this project and have your experiences and thoughts preserved into the future, go to our COVID-19 in Niagara website and add your stories.
The Digital Scholarship Lab in conjunction with the Map, Data & GIS Library invite you to learn from their expertise with their Fall Workshop Series. In addition, both the DSL and MDGL invite you to get ‘hands-on’ by plotting your hometown and entering the Data Visualization Contest.
Our Makerspace Team invite you to take a virtual tour of their new facilities. Workshops will continue online for the fall term and their website features a new FAQ.
Stay up-to-date by keeping an eye on the website and our social media channels – Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for any changes or expansion in services as the term progresses.
The Library Team wish you all the best for a successful start to the fall term.
Brock University instructors are now equipped to directly add online course materials to Ares, the Library reserve system.
While the Reserve Team remain ready to receive and process your requests as usual, the self-serve option gives flexibility to instructors who wish to do this work themselves.
Step-by-step instructions are available to guide users through the process, and demonstrate two options:
Video tutorials are also available. All materials linked from Omni or uploaded directly to Ares will get a final check for Copyright compliance, and will then be active for students.
Questions? Please email reserve@brocku.ca
Brock University Library is pleased to announce that we are resuming our scanning service – and it’s easier and more convenient than ever. You can now request a scan of a book chapter or journal article right from within Omni, the Library’s academic search tool.
This service is available, free of charge, to all current Brock students, staff, and faculty.
When looking at a book or print journal in Omni, simply click on ‘Request a Scan’ and provide us the details about which chapter or page selection you want. Our team will pull the book from the shelves, scan your requested section, and email you within a few days. That email will include a link – click it, log in with your Brock ID and then download the PDF.
Please remember that we must abide by the guidelines in Brock’s Fair Dealing policy, which generally means one chapter from a book, one article from a journal issue, or up to 10% of the total work.
Note: Books available electronically through Hathi Trust Emergency Temporary Access Service are not eligible for ‘Request a Scan’.
Learn more about our scanning service and other supports.
Ever since we closed the doors to our physical space in March, Brock University Library has been working diligently to provide alternative access to our print and physical collections. The latest developments on this front have been the launch of our book pickup service and the HathiTrust emergency digital collection. As we get closer to September, we are turning our attention to course reserves. Normally, a significant portion of course reserves would be print copies of textbooks, but the realities of the pandemic mean that we cannot offer any physical print reserves. To support instructors and the students in their courses, we have been exploring digital alternatives for print copies of textbooks.
When it comes to providing digital access to textbooks, however, the Library is hindered by the textbook publishers. Simply put, most textbooks are not available to libraries in any format other than print. Most of the major textbook publishers — Pearson, Cengage, Houghton, McGraw Hill, Oxford University Press Canada Textbooks, Elsevier Imprints, Thieme — simply do not sell e-textbooks to libraries. This means that for courses that have adopted textbooks from these publishers, students who do not purchase the textbook have no alternative access to the textbook contents.
We work with instructors to explore and identify viable textbook alternatives, including:
Efforts will be made to secure online materials that are free from digital rights management restrictions (DRM) in order to ensure unfettered student access. DRM includes limits on the number of users that can access a resource at any one time, as well as limits on copying, printing and downloading.
The easiest way to get started with your course reserves is to submit your reading list on the Library’s course reserves webpage. If you have questions about how the library can support your course, email the Reserves team at reserve@brocku.ca. To ensure we can meet demand, we encourage submission of your reading list before August 4th, 2020.
If, as you prepare for your courses, you have questions about the finer points of copyright, please see our Copying for Teaching & Educational Purposes website for guidance and support.
With thanks to the University of Guelph for starting the conversation about the challenges of e-textbooks.
Collections, Faculty, OER, Open Educational Resources, Publishing, Students
Categories: Main
With Brock becoming the 12th university in Canada to adopt an Open Access Policy, the Library is here to support researchers in making their work openly accessible.
The policy, recently adopted by Senate, calls for Brock researchers and scholars to deposit an electronic copy of their academic journal articles into the Brock University Digital Repository, an online collection of scholarly output produced by the Brock community and managed by the Library.
Researchers can submit work themselves to the repository or use a Library service called Support for Sharing Your Work – complete a form, attach your articles and Library staff will deposit them on your behalf.
More information about the open access policy, including answers to frequently asked questions and an opt-out form, can be found on the policy webpage.
For more information, contact Liaison and Scholarly Communication Librarian Elizabeth Yates – eyates@brocku.ca or your Liaison Librarian
Faculty, Open Access, Research, Scholarly Communication
Categories: Main
We are in the midst of a civil rights uprising.
As Brock’s Director of Human Rights and Equity, Leela Madhava Rau notes, “Systemic racism, and specifically anti-Black racism, is being named as a root cause of inequities with which people have been living for centuries… People are in the streets demanding nothing less than total change: not only the ability to live their lives without the ever-present threat of violence, but the opportunity for everyone, regardless of identity, to participate fully and equitably in societal structures.”
Many are stating the desire to learn, listen, read, and reflect. To that end, we are highlighting a selection of books, ebooks, and streaming videos on the topic of ‘Anti-Black Racism and White Privilege’. While our print collection remains inaccessible at this time, we encourage you to seek out local booksellers and public libraries.
Our Collections, Virtual Book Display
Categories: Featured Collections, Main