Welcome to the Laurier Library!
We have developed this guide as an easy "go to" for a lot of your questions about the Laurier Library's resources and services.A little about us, Laurier Library is one of 14 members of the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) coming together to create a single academic search tool called Omni. You may have experience using this system at another institution and even if you haven't, we are here to make our resources and services as easy to access as possible.The Laurier Library has three different physical locations (Waterloo, Brantford and Kitchener) and you can request material from any of our campuses or request material from other institutions using Omni.
We hope this guide is helpful and if you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to ask.
Library Resources and Services
Resources:The Library provides you and your students a variety of research materials, both in electronic and in print. These sources also include datasets, music, games and film, and many of our discipline-specific databases can be discovered through our subject guides. For physical items that Laurier does not own, we can often find and borrow these from other libraries from around the world.- Start your search in Omni to discover the millions of items available from Laurier and 13 other Ontario university libraries. For help with Omni, see our video, Getting Started with Omni.
- For information on requesting materials from Libraries outside of Laurier, please explore our page, Request from Other Libraries.
- For help with placing materials on reserve (course readings), please see the "Course Reserves and Copyright" tab below.
Services: We are here to help you and your students! Below, you will see a variety of tabs highlighting just some of our services, but a fuller list can be found at Services.
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to connect with your Subject Librarian (please see tab below). On weekends or evenings, connect with us through chat or email us at infouser@wlu.ca . Subject Librarians Every subject that is taught at Laurier has a corresponding subject or liaison librarian.To find out who your subject librarian is, go to www.library.wlu.ca and click on "About" then "People" and then "By Subject" or go to the address www.library.wlu.ca/about/people/subject. Subject librarians are the best place to go as they can direct you to the right people to help you with your questions or concerns. They also can help you select material for your online course, help create library research assignments, create online research instruction modules for your students, help you with your own research, assist students with their research assignments, and more!
Course Reserves and Copyright
The Course Reserves Team in the Library's Copyright and Resource Delivery Services department is here to assist with all of your copyright and course reading needs. We know that being CTF makes it hard to get the readings you want to set up for your students ahead of the course start dates; we're here to help you with that, just send a word document of citations to libreserves@wlu.ca and we'll take care of sourcing, prepping, and copyright clearing the readings for you. Our course reserves system, Ares, also automatically integrates into MyLS via the Course Reserves tab so your students can access the readings for all of their courses from one centralised location.
What can you put on reserve right now?
- Ebooks (while COVID-19 has campus closed we cannot accommodate requests for physical books)
- Book chapters
- Journal articles
- Links to streaming video
- Links to streaming audio
- Website pages
Additional Resources
- Put course readings on reserve
- Book a video
- Linking to library resources
Library Instruction
For all courses
We can support your students online by:
- Creating resources on the Library web site that you can refer students to or link to in MyLearningSpace, including:
- Customized online course guides to help students with their assignments
- Short online research skills tutorials, some including worksheets that can be assigned for practice or used as assignments
- Providing online MyLearningSpace content that you can use in your course, including our Understanding Plagiarism module.
- Providing personalized support from within your course in MyLearningSpace. We can upload relevant Library resources and instructional content, alert students to Library services through email, or answer student questions through discussion boards.
For online courses
In addition to the services listed above, for online courses we can:
- Teach live online research skills sessions (via Zoom)
- Provide individual student research appointments through email or online
Plagiarism Module
The Library's plagiarism module consists of the the Understanding Plagiarism video and a quiz to test students' understanding of the video content. The quiz has 10 automatically graded questions (true/false and yes/no), and is worth 10 points. The module is offered in two ways:
- A module that can be uploaded and integrated into your MyLearningSpace course. If you choose to, you can associate a grade with the quiz.
- A separate MyLearningSpace course, with the same content as the module, available through self-registration. Students receive a completion certificate after scoring 80% or better on the quiz. To self-register, log into MyLearningSpace, click on Self-Registration in the top navigation bar, and choose Understanding Plagiarism (Library) from the list of available courses.Please visit our website and fill out the module request form if you are interested in incorporating this into your online course.
Research Support
Omni Help
- Get help with the new Omni search tool
- Email the Library Omni team with questions, comments, or to discuss a problem
- To report a problem with Omni, use the Omni problem form
Online
- Book a Librarian: make an appointment for a research consultation
- Subject or Liaison Librarians can help with issues including starting your research, searching, current awareness, assessing journals for publication and citation tracking. For a personalized appointment, contact your subject or liaison librarian.
- Ask Us online (chat and e-mail)
- Video tutorials (quick tips)
Additional Resources
- Borrowing privileges
- Show your research impact with a Google Scholar Profile
- Center for Research Libraries
- Data and statistics
- Copyright info
- Electronic publishing guide (Library and Archives Canada)
- Places to publish
- CARMA: webcasts on research methods and analysis
Accessibility
We have a variety of supports in place for both faculty and students to make our library resources and services more accessible. Students registered with the Accessible Learning Centre may contact the Library's accessibility associate for assistance. Explore our “Accessible Services” page, which provides links to the supports we have. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch with our Accessibility Committee at libaccessibility@wlu.ca
Get involved
- Contact your liaison librarian
- Recommend an item for purchase
- Donating books
- Consider nominating your undergraduate students for our Library Undergraduate Research Award