Title:...but don’t forget the library!

EVEN FOR PERSONS WHO ARE OFF-CAMPUS, THERE ARE MANY SERVICES WHICH THE STAFF AT WALTHER LIBRARY OFFERS

Not too many years ago, when you left an institution of higher education, you literally left it behind. Today, with access to the Internet, you can have almost as much contact with the institution as you did when you were physically present on the campus.

All former students of Concordia Theological Seminary, as well as any persons on the professional church worker roster of the Missouri Synod, have patron privileges at Walther Library. If you send us your request, we will respond to it. There are only two differences between your status while your were a student and your status when off-campus. The first is a change in the length of time you can check books out. As a professional church worker, you will have a check-out period of 45 days. This gives us time to ship the book out to you, and time for you to return it via mail, and still have at least 30 days to read it. The check-out period for vicars remains the same as that for students.

The second change is that you can no longer use inter-library loan through Walther Library. If there is a book in a library other than our own, there is no feasible way for us to request the book, have it sent from the other library, ship it to you, have you send it back to us, and then have us send it back to the original library, and still give you time to read it. But all is not lost. You should be able to get inter-library loan easily through your own public library. Or you might want to check on borrowing and inter-library loan privileges at a nearby academic or seminary library.

The place to start for accessing the wealth of materials we have available is Walther Library’s home page on the World Wide Web:

http://www.ctsfw.edu/library/

You can also easily reach the library’s home page from the Life of the World portal. Go to

click on the library icon, and you will be at the library’s home page. From there, you can move to the linked pages for the particular help you need.

The very first link on the left is “Our Catalog.” Clicking on this link will take you currently to the DRA Web2 Catalog. By the fall, the link will still be there, but take you to our new Ex Libris Aleph Catalog. (See the previous issue of News & Notes from Walther Library for information about the change.) In either web catalog, you can search for books in Walther Library, or in all 23 PALNI libraries. But how do you get the books you discover you want? You can easily obtain any books in Walther Library by contacting us—via e-mail, phone, or mail. To request books via e-mail, simply send your request to:

gabar@mail.ctsfw.edu

Another link on the left you will find helpful is the “Other Resources” link. One link on the other resources page is “PALNI SiteSearch.” There you still have access to all the databases which you could search in the library on PALNI SiteSearch. The only difference between using this page in the library and off-campus is that the computer will ask you for your library bar code to verify that you are from Concordia Theological Seminary—just one good reason not to throw away your old picture ID with the bar code on it. With the bar code, it doesn’t matter if you are sitting at a computer terminal in Iowa, Alaska, or Russia—the computer will treat you just like a student sitting in the library here on campus.

In addition to books, the various databases available through “PALNI SiteSearch” will identify journal articles which you might want and need. If we have the journal here in the library, we will be happy to copy the article and send it to you. If we don’t hold the journal, however, you will need to request the article through inter-library loan at the library you use for that purpose.

In addition to World Wide Web resources, other resources which you may find valuable are the various electronic mailing lists. For example, you can keep up with news from the seminary via e-mail. The Seminary's Public Relations Department distributes all of its press releases via e-mail to everyone who requests them. To sign up, send an e-mail to:

CTSNews-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Leave the subject line and the message blank. You will receive an automated reply from the mailing list program which will confirm that you are a new subscriber to this e-mail “list.”

Other electronic lists allow you to contribute as well as receive. One such list is the Wittenberg list (moderated by our own Rev. Bob Smith). This is a list for the discussion of Lutheran history. To subscribe, send a message to:

mailserv@crf.cuis.edu

In the body of the note, write:

subscribe Wittenberg your name

Another electronic list is TableTalk from cat41 (Confess and Teach for Unity). This is a list for discussion of Lutheran theology. To subscribe, send a message to:

tabletalk-on@cat41.org

That’s all—the address says it all. Please note: This last list is a high-volume list, generating a hundred messages a day, so be prepared to keep up with your e-mail if you subscribe.

And what more shall I say? I do not have time (or space) to tell about...(with apologies to the author of Hebrews). There are still a multitude of resources available electronically; just browsing through the ones available directly from the library’s web page will take you several days. We here in the library stand ready to help you to use those resources, or to use any others, or simply to learn what resources are available. If you have any questions for us, please write, phone, or e-mail us at:

gabar@mail.ctsfw.edu

and we will be glad to try to help you out.

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