Welcome to K-State. As a new faculty member at K-State, you have access to a wealth of
resources to help you with your research and teaching. Here at K-State Libraries, we want
you to know that our expert staff are here to help you and your students.
The Libraries have many resources to help you as a faculty member. One of the most important
things we want you to know is that you have a specific subject librarian assigned to your
department. Your librarian can help you create research assignments, and can come to your
class to talk about things like information literacy and using the Libraries’ resources
for research. They can also connect you with research guides, online lessons, publishing
resources and more. You can visit our Teaching resources webpage
to learn more about what services the Libraries offers to help you with your classroom instruction.
We specialize in teaching students basic through advanced research skills. We can also provide
instruction for topics like systematic reviews, research using primary resources and evidence-based
research.
As a faculty member, you also play an important role in getting students connected to library
resources. The Libraries are an integral part of success for K-State students, but students
might not know about all of the resources they have available. Students tell us that
when faculty members like you tell them to use a specific Libraries resource, like our
peer research consultants or research guides, students take that advice seriously and are
more likely to use the resource. So please, help your students connect with K-State Libraries
too. We have found that two of our resources, interlibrary
loan and course reserves, have been especially helpful to both faculty and students.
Through our fast and free interlibrary loan service, we can get you the resources you
need! Interlibrary loan lets us borrow almost anything from other libraries. We can get
articles and book chapters as PDFs from other libraries and our own collection very quickly—last
spring, 65% of requests were filled in less than 24 hours!
As an instructor at K-State, you can put course materials and textbooks on Course Reserves
at any of our library locations. This lets students easily access those materials for
free from a library help desk for a shortened loan period saving them money.
In addition to our services online and in-person, we want you to know that the Libraries are
more than just one building! The Libraries have five locations, including the Veterinary
Medical Library, the Polytechnic Library, the Math/Physics Library, the Paul Weigel
Library of Architecture, Planning and Design and Hale Library, our main location. All of
our spaces offer Libraries resources and provide tools and study spaces for your students.
A new resource at K-State Libraries is the Sunderland Foundation Innovation Lab. Located
on the 1st and 2nd floors of Hale Library, this state-of-the-art facility offers all
K-Staters the opportunity to use the latest innovative technologies. This includes video
and sound production studios, 3D printers, makerspaces and this Liquid Galaxy.
We want to partner with you to incorporate the lab into your teaching and research endeavors.
We would love for you to come visit, take a tour, and talk with our staff about how
you might be able to use the lab. The Center for the Advancement of Digital
Scholarship leads the Libraries scholarly communication efforts. Our staff can help
researchers navigate publishing opportunities, consult on copyright, discover how to create
and support open access materials and more. K-State Libraries is committed to the advancement
of open access initiatives.
K-State Libraries has several programs and initiatives that provide grants to faculty
for supporting open access. These include the Open/Alternative Textbook Initiative,
which provides grants up to $5,000 to K-State instructors to help them develop open educational
resources, and the K-State Open Access Publishing Fund, which assists K-State authors by paying
reasonable article processing charges for publishing in open access journals.
Lastly, we want you to know that the special collections and university archives can help
enhance your research and teaching.
We can integrate special collections materials into a wide array of classroom assignments.
By using our materials, students can better contextualize the subject they are studying,
develop their analytical research skills, and evaluate primary sources.
Be sure to check out our website at lib.k-state.edu for more information about our resources,
locations and upcoming events.
You can also follow us @kstatelibraries on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Tik Tok to
keep up-to-date with Libraries happenings.
Welcome again to Kansas State University and we hope to see you at the Libraries soon!