Guide to Library Services

Library Services

	Basic Services & Facilities
	Additional Services for Academic Staff
	Additional Services for Graduate students
	Digital Library
	Document Delivery Services (DDS)
	E-Reserve via IVLE
	Library Information Online Services (LOIS)
	Reserve Books/Readings (RBR)

NUS Digital Library

	Introduction
	Points to note
	Electronic forms for Library Services
	Indexes & Abstracts
	Electronic Journals
	Dictionaries & Encyclopedias

Introduction

The NUS Digital Library provides NUS staff and students with easy access to subscribed electronic resources available on the World Wide Web.

By using the Digital Library, you may check databases to find out what articles have been written on a particular topic, check if the NUS Libraries has access to the article in electronic format and read it on your desktop. If there is no electronic format, a check in LINC will verify if the library has the journal on its shelves. Through the Digital Library, research has been made easier!

Resources under NUS Digital Library include: 

	NUS examination papers
	electronic books
	electronic journals
	newspapers
	dictionaries and encyclopedias
	indexes and abstracts
	patents
	statistical data
	standards
	biographies
	digitised videos
	LION : Library Instruction ONline
	Useful Web resources for various subjects

NUS Digital Library is available at 
http://www.lib.nus.edu.sg/digital/

You can browse by title for one type of material, like indexes and abstracts. In the list of indexes and abstracts given, the ones with the symbol W are available on the Web. Click on the title to access the database. 

Alternatively, you can browse by subject. For example if you click on Engineering & Technology, a list of resources available for engineering is shown including e-journals, e-books and reference databases. 

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Points to note: 

	NUS staff and students must log in to NUSNET to access these resources. For off-campus access, NUS staff and students must dialup to NUSNET. More information on dialup is available at http://www.dialup.nus.edu.sg/.
	Due to licensing agreement regulations, external members can only access selected electronic resources and only from terminals in the library.

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Electronic Forms for Library Services

You can make requests for some services depending on your status, for example academic staff, graduate students, undergraduates, corporate or personal external members. Forms available include: 

	Ask a Librarian
	Change of Mail and/or Email Address
	Form for Reporting of Lost Book
	Request for Document Delivery
	Request for Interlibrary Loan
	Request to Purchase New AV Materials/CD-ROMs for the Library
	Request to Purchase New Books for the Library
	Request to Subscribe to New Journals for the Library

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Indexes and Abstracts
When you have a topic in mind and you need to find the latest research done on the topic, use an appropriate index or abstract, e.g. 

	ABI/Inform Complete (business)
	Compendex (engineering)
	Expanded Academic ASAP (general)
	Lexis.com (law)
	PubMed (medicine)
	SciFinder Scholar (science)
	Science Citation Index
	Social Science Citation Index

You can browse and select an appropriate index by subject in Digital Library or ask for help from staff at the Information Desk. 

For example, if you are interested in the topic Health care for the elderly. You search Expanded Academic ASAP using keywords like health care and (elderly or aged). Browse through the records retrieved and one of them is: 

Health care for the elderly: two cases of technology diffusion.
Alexander Dozet; Carl Hampus Lyttkens; Paul Nystedt.
Social Science & Medicine, Jan 2002 v54 i1 p49(16). 
Abstract: Diffusion of medical technology and the growing proportion of elderly people in the population are generally regarded as major contributors to the increasing health care expenditure in the industrialised world. This study explores the importance of one specific factor in this process, the change in the use of technology among elderly patients.

Some databases only give the citation. You need to check LINC to verify if NUS Library has the journal or book, e.g. check LINC using TITLE and type Social Science & Medicine. You will see that the journal is available in hard copy in the Central Library and that the Library has subscribed to the electronic version of the journal. Some databases give direct links to the full text of the articles, which you can view on your desktop. 

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Electronic Journals

When you need to access an article in a journal that the NUS Libraries has subscribed to the electronic version, use E-journals in Digital Library.

For example, if you need Social Science & Medicine 2002 vol.54 no.1, go to Digital Library and browse e-journals by title. Under the alphabet S, you will see a link to Social Science & Medicine. Click on it to go to the journal Web site and you can navigate to the volume and article you need.

Some e-journal publishers allowing you to search by title, author or keywords. For example, you can search IEEE publications using IEEE Xplore. Other publishers that you can do searches for articles in their set of electronic journals include Springer, JSTOR and ScienceDirect. 

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Dictionaries and Encyclopedias

When you need to look up background information on a topic or look up the meaning of a word, use an appropriate encyclopedia or dictionary. For example, if you need to find out more about cloning, use the Encyclopedia of Life Sciences and type in cloning to get the following information: 

"Cell cloning refers to establishing a population of cultured cells that were initially derived from a single cell. Successful cell cloning presents two challenges to the researcher. The first is to develop methods to isolate individual cells, and the second is to establish culture conditions in which the single cell will survive and propagate (Martin, 1994). ..." 

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Last updated: 11-08-2003