Tag Archives: online resources

Top Five Hidden Resources at The Ames Library: #2. ILLiad

#2. ILLiad

At this stage in your IWU career, you’re probably aware that we have a ton of books, journals, and databases to help you out with all your assignments, and that if we don’t have a book at Ames, you can borrow it from I-Share. You might not know, though, that we have a service that allows you to access articles and books that aren’t in our collections or I-Share–for free.

ILLiad is an interlibrary loan service that lets you request the full text of articles that we don’t have access to and books that aren’t available via Ames or I-Share. Requesting the materials you need is easy, but requires a separate account from your regular library account. On average, articles requested through ILLiad arrive within 48 hours and books arrive within 8 days. However, in some cases articles can take up to a week to arrive and books can take up to two weeks, so don’t wait until the last minute!

New Digital Collections from the Library of Congress

The Library of Congress has just added new primary-source materials to its expansive digital collections. Among these materials are the papers of Susan B. Anthony andĀ Benjamin Franklin, and a collection related to the National Film Registry. If film studies are your thing, then you’ll love the latter. You can watch entire films like St. Louis Blues, in which “[l]egendary blues singer Bessie Smith finds her gambler lover Jimmy messin’ with a pretty, younger woman; he leaves and she sings the blues, with chorus and dancers.”

Enjoy exploring these brand-new collections here!

Resources for National Park Week

Did you know that it’s National Park Week this week? In celebration, theĀ Scout Report has put together a great list of online resources related to national parks in the United States and beyond. These include Rose Aguilar and Laura Flynn’s article “Your Call: The history of Native Americans and National Parks,” NASA’s National Parks from Space, and the Open Parks Network.

Photo courtesy of Dave Sizer.

You can start exploring all of these amazing resources here. And who knows? Maybe they’ll even lead you to explore a national park or two.