Getting Materials for a Course
The JKM Library serves the students, faculty, and staff of McCormick Theological Seminary and the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago.
If you need a resource for a course, let us know! We will do our best to find and make that resource available to you.
Since JKM is a separate institution, our very small and busy staff relies heavily on the faculties of each seminary to consult with us for the level of course support they would like to have in terms of library resources. We are not informed by default of courses being taught at either seminary, though we do make an effort to check the public course postings at both schools.
Libraries live by providing services, and you are part of our mission! Let us know what you're doing. Ask us for help. We have a lot of ways to get you the resources you need.
Students
In the best of all possible worlds, your professors will have consulted with the JKM Library regarding the resources they intend to use in their courses, we will have obtained electronic copies of the required texts and as many of the recommended texts as possible, and everything will just work.
You can find any resources available from JKM using our library catalog. All of our e-books should be available to you from our catalog. You can also search our databases and other electronic resources from our e-resources page.
You can also search the nearly 100 other I-Share libraries for physical copies of books to request. This will also show you books from JKM.
Any physical books you request, from JKM or through I-Share, will be delivered by default to the table by the 4th floor elevators, across from the LSTC front desk, in the shared campus building at 5416 S Cornell Ave in Hyde Park. This may take around a week, sometimes more, sometimes less.
For more details on how to use our services, please see our orientation tutorial.
What if it's not available?
Since we do not live in the best of all possible worlds, there are many different reasons that the resource you need might not be accessible when you want it, even if we know about it and have purchased it.
Whatever the reason, whenever you cannot access something you need, please email us at ihaveaquestion@jkmlibrary.org and let us know what you need, and we will help you!
What if I need something else?
We are also happy to help you find and gain access to whatever you need for your research, whether for a class or for any other aspect of your program of studies, or even just for fun!
Contact us at ihaveaquestion@jkmlibrary.org, we will be happy to work with you!
Faculty
Faculty members are responsible for all course materials they choose to put on their syllabi. However, the JKM Library is proud to support your work, and we want to help you!
Chances are good your personal book budget isn't as big as you might like—and your students often can't afford all the books you want them to read, either.
And for copyright reasons, it is safer if you can use properly-licensed electronic texts, to limit the number of scans you might otherwise make and distribute through courseware.
This is why libraries are so important! The more resources JKM can buy for your courses, especially in electronic formats, the less burden there will be on you and your students.
In general, when picking course texts, please also search our catalog and consider the following:
- does JKM have the text electronically; and
- how many physical copies are also available in I-Share for students who want one?
This is not a hard limit, by any means. We can also buy access to materials we don't own, as long as they are available from our suppliers (not Amazon, B&N, etc.) and fit within our budget.
JKM staff are happy to consult with faculty members regarding the purchase availability of resources you would like to use. This includes the question of which translations of a work may be available in electronic formats.
We know that prep time is a cost all its own! But the earlier you talk to us about your courses and the resources you might like to use, the more help we can provide.
We are also happy to help pull together lists of available resources on your topics, to make research easier on you and your classes.
We have included more specifics below, to help answer any questions you may have. Email us at ihaveaquestion@jkmlibrary.org, and we will work with you.
Getting Access | E-Resource Licensing | I-Share Copies
Scanning | Course Reserves | Reference Materials
How do I get access to your electronic resources?
Please let us know if you are not yet registered with JKM, or do not yet have an OpenAthens account to access our electronic resources.
Before 2023, we used to rely on people coming in to the library to register with us. Now, we rely on having your information sent to us—but it's an imperfect system, which means we still rely heavily on you telling us you want access.
Contact us at ihaveaquestion@jkmlibrary.org, and we will confirm your status with your institution and get you set up with the privileges you need.
How are electronic resources licensed?
Electronic resources, unlike physical books, are not so much owned as licensed by a library. Each library pays for the availability of a certain number of "copies" from a supplier (usually either 1, 3, or unlimited access, with cost rising proportionately), to be accessed only by their own patrons.
We attempt to purchase electronic resources with licenses to cover as many users as possible. However, not every resource has unlimited-access licensing available. If an electronic book is going to be used by an entire class, it will help us to know that, so that we can acquire enough "copies" (sometimes from multiple vendors) to make it work.
While the libraries of other institutions may offer our patrons guest access to the electronic resources they purchase for their own affiliates, licensing terms dictate that guest access can only be had in-person, while connected to their systems. (For more information, see our page on copyright law.) This is also the case at the University of Chicago's Regenstein Library. They cannot legally provide outside institutions with remote access to their licensed resources, and the seminaries' services agreement with them does not change that.
Because JKM is your institutional library, we are the only library that purchases electronic resources for affiliates of LSTC and McCormick, and the only library authorized to give you and your registered students remote access to those electronic resources.
The JKM Library provides this access using a single-sign-on (SSO) system, OpenAthens, which authenticates every user individually.
We have access to a wide range of publishers through our existing e-book platforms. However, we cannot license e-books from online retailers, so e.g. Amazon availability doesn't count.
Once we purchase an electronic resource, we must then integrate it into our systems to make it available. This is time-consuming, and if it can happen before the semester starts, so much the better for everyone!
How many physical copies of a book can my students access?
The JKM Library is also a long-standing member of CARLI's I-Share network, a union catalog of nearly 100 heavily-vetted academic libraries throughout Illinois. This membership makes most of our interlibrary loans nearly as convenient as local borrowing for all patrons.
Our I-Share membership means your classes can search the entire network and borrow physical copies in quantities no single library has available on-hand. CARLI estimates that the I-Share network holds over 15 million titles, and over 38 million items.
This means that any physical books JKM has, other libraries may also have—and physical books we may not have, other libraries may still have. Sometimes this means there are only one or two in the entire network, and even if we don't own a copy, it can still be available to you or your students.
But for commonly-used resources, often there are many schools with available copies. We at JKM usually handle as many as half a dozen requested copies of the same book, for several different books, in a semester for courses taught by our seminaries.
While Regenstein access means sometimes an extra copy or two, those may also be in use, though it is always worth checking their catalog. But membership in I-Share has long provided us with a serious advantage over access to the University Libraries alone!
Access to JKM secures you and your students access to this wealth of consortial resources from our partner libraries.
What if I need a scan?
While you can borrow any book available in JKM or I-Share, maybe you just need a chapter scanned for your class. Or your own research! As long as it's within the limits of copyright, and we have the staff time and equipment, we're happy to help. We can also direct you to the resources you may need to do it yourself.
If the book is in JKM's collections, we will retrieve it and make the scan on-site as we have availability.
For books from I-Share, we place requests, and make scans as they arrive, sending the books back as they are completed. Timing depends on the availability of the book in I-Share, and its transit to us through ILDS.
The University of Chicago's "Scan and Deliver" service is also available, to you and to us, for scans of materials from their print collections. We may use this service to get scans of any material you request, if it is the better option.
We are also able to make copy requests through OCLC's WorldShare system to fill requests for chapter or article scans.
And if you have in your possession a relatively hard-to-get source that you need scanned to provide to your class, we may be able to help.
Email us at ihaveaquestion@jkmlibrary.org, and we will see what we can do!
Does JKM still handle course reserves?
Since we no longer have a reading room or a circulation desk, we no longer set aside physical course reserves. However, our physical course reserves always promised more access than students ever actually used.
Electronic resources have generally taken over that niche, and are far more likely to be used! Our e-books are available to your students wherever they may be, and to more of them at a time for much longer periods, than our physical course reserves ever were.
Please make sure that you let us know if your course will be using an electronic resource that we license, so that we can ensure that we have enough license "seats" for the demand.
Likewise, please let us know if there is an electronic resource you need that we do not yet license, and we will look into its availability.
While we are a small academic library supported by two small seminaries, and our budget matches that reality, we will do what we can!
How do I access JKM's Reference Collection?
Reference materials that used to be available in JKM's reading room are now available for borrowing on standard loan periods.
Any books you see in our catalog that show "Available at JKM LIBRARY TRUST Reference Shelving (for request)" and have REF at the end of the call number can now be requested just like items from our main stacks.
In our catalog, please scroll down to the item description for listings of the contents of multivolume works, so that you can request the correct volumes.
You can also browse the items we have available in this collection using our new Collections interface: The JKM Reference Collection
