The Library is working on reducing waiting times for distance journal article requests from 4-5 days by post down to 1-2 days by email, or just a few minutes if students can access online articles themselves.

Most journal articles currently requested by distance learning students are actually available online. It’s time for the Library to take better advantage of this by helping you find articles online where available and using email instead of post for requests. This will save student waiting times, paper, printing and postage costs (as well as trees).

From Semester One 2011 all requested journal articles will be delivered by email, with a turnaround time of 1-2 days. Articles that are available online will have a link to the access point for downloading, while those held in print only will be scanned and emailed. Until then students will have a choice of email or postal delivery. Just indicate your preference when making your requests.

We’ll be helping you with finding online journal articles yourself, eliminating the waiting time completely. View the demonstration (right) to see how it's done. We’re also happy to talk you through the process by phone, email, using online meeting software to share computer screens, or in person if you’re visiting.

Students who don’t have adequate internet access or have other special circumstances may apply to Distance Library Service next year to continue receiving print delivery.

If you have any queries about the change in delivery or finding online articles yourself, please contact us.

Need journal articles for your assignments? Struggling to find them? Help is at hand.
If you have references or citations to journal articles (from a study guide or in the bibliography of an article you have read, for example) then your first step should be to check the Library Catalogue to see if Massey University has the journal. See our How to Find pages for more detailed information on finding known journal articles - and view a short "movie" to see how to go about it.

If you are looking for journal articles on a topic (but don't yet have any specific references) then you need to start at the Article Databases page on the Library website. Choose the subject area you are interested in and see which databases are recommended. If you need help working on a search strategy for your topic, there is useful information on the How to Find pages (and another short movie to guide you).

Many of the journal article databases that Massey provides have full-text articles available directly. However, if there is no direct link to the full-text article, then click on the MasseyLink icon to see if the Library has your article.

Don't struggle with this - please get in touch with us! We can help you find good information quickly.

A while ago in a posting cheerfully titled Thinking the unthinkable I mused on what might happen to our journal collections if we had to renew our subscriptions at the then prevailing exchange rate. Since then the NZ dollar has eased back a bit but we are by no means out of the woods and unless something unexpected happens there will be some difficult decisions made within the next few months.

But, we are not alone! A colleague has pointed us to an article by Zoe Corbyn in the Times Higher Educational Supplement. She warns UK academics that they can Expect few new titles in library as sterling's fall pounds acquisitions! I particularly liked this quote from one Michael Jubb -

"In some libraries, the extra costs for journal licences that they will face next year, simply as a result of the fall in the value of the pound, exceed the total of their current budgets for buying books."

Or maybe I don't even want to think about it!

A little while back I had a slightly tongue-in-cheek look at the idea of Information at the Press of a Button and suggested that we still had a fair way to go before this pleasant dream became a reality. What I was talking about was the complexity of digital information systems and the amount of sheer technical know-how that is still required to use them, but I realised this afternoon that looked at from a slightly different angle Information at the Press of a Button sometimes seems awfully close.

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