How to Use JKM Library Services

Welcome!

If you've been to a library orientation already, this will hopefully be a good refresher. If not, the information and instructions below will hopefully help you get started. Either way, you can email us at ihaveaquestion@jkmlibrary.org with any questions you may have.

We also have some introductory videos posted in our Research section, and other guides in the "How do I ..." menu to the left.


Introduction  |  Log In with Open Athens  

Find Books with Primo  |  Find Articles in Databases

Ask a Librarian for More


Introduction

As current students, staff, or faculty members of McCormick Theological Seminary or the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, your primary library services are paid for and provided by the JKM Library. (Our page on alumni resources can be found here.)

In addition to the books you can borrow directly from JKM, we are your gateway to nearly 100 other academic libraries throughout the State of Illinois, in the I-Share system, who lend books free of charge, renewable for a total of 16 weeks, and don't charge fines or fees as long as the books are returned in good condition.

We also provide access to numerous e-books, databases, and online journals for your academic research, as well as a broad range of useful electronic resources to help meet your other needs.

While you cannot visit the JKM Library in person (we are located in an access-controlled off-campus facility), we do deliver books to campus regularly, and are always available by email at ihaveaquestion@jkmlibrary.org. And you can visit many of our partner libraries in person!

Note: JKM Library services are entirely separate from the services McCormick and LSTC have obtained for their members from the University of Chicago Libraries. Those separately-contracted services include the ability to:

  • borrow their books,
  • request books delivered to their circulation desks, and
  • request scans from any item in their physical collections.

They do not include access to the University's electronic resources, which you can only use while visiting e.g. the Regenstein Library in-person.

See our Partner Libraries page for more information, and contact your seminary's IT department (McCormick, LSTC) for help setting up your UChicago library account.

You can and should use our services together!

 

Log In with OpenAthens

If you are a currently-enrolled (including cross-registered) student, or a staff or faculty member, at either McCormick or LSTC, your OpenAthens login will give you access to all JKM Library resources.

This is the online equivalent of your library card. With this one login, you can access our catalog, check your library account, request books held by JKM or any other I-Share library, and sign in to any database or electronic journal we have access to.

We create your OpenAthens login, and send you information about it in a welcome email, when your seminary provides us with your information. Look for this email!

Your username is generally your seminary email address (with the @lstc.edu, @go.mccormick.edu, or @mccormick.edu). Cross-registered students will use their own institutional email address. Temporary or non-degree-program students may have to use their personal email address instead.

We will initially send you a randomly-generated password, along with a link that will let you change it to something of your choosing.

Any time you see a prompt to sign in using OpenAthens, you can simply enter your email address and your password, and you will have access to whatever resources JKM has subscribed to.

Any time you see a link that says "Log in through your institution," or something similar to that, you can search for "JKM Library," and they should redirect you to the same JKM Library OpenAthens login screen.

OpenAthens accounts do expire. We may need to renew yours during your time at seminary, and we are happy to do it! Just let us know when you expect to finish your studies, so we can set the date accordingly.

If you do not receive a "Welcome to the JKM Library" email from us at the start of your first semester, or if your OpenAthens login does not work, or stops working for any reason: please use your seminary email address to contact us at ihaveaquestion@jkmlibrary.org, and we will get you set up with everything you need!

 

Find Books with Primo

"Primo" is the name of JKM's online catalog software. Once you have signed in with your OpenAthens login, Primo provides you with access to our physical collections of books, books held by any other I-Share library, and also all of the e-books we have access to.

There are two main ways you can search using Primo:

Since you can only access e-books from us, you can find all of them by searching the JKM "Library Catalog" in Primo.

However, most of the time you will want the broadest access to possible sources you can get, and that means searching all I-Share libraries. (Which will also show you our books and e-books!)

When you find a book or e-book you want to read, click on its title in the catalog search. 

Scroll down to either:

  • "View Online," where links to electronic full text will be, or
  • "Get It," which will show you the status of our copy and what other libraries may have one available, and let you place either a local "Request" from JKM or an "I-Share" request from another library.

Our e-books come from many different platforms, so your experience with them will vary, but they will generally allow you to:

  1. view the text in your browser,
  2. download or print limited portions as PDF, and
  3. "borrow" a copy, i.e. download a locked, time-limited version to your device, once you have the right software installed (usually from Adobe).

The JKM Library cannot get e-books from commercial online retailers, like Amazon, because they do not work with our systems. Nor, for copyright reasons, can we provide electronic versions of physical texts.

Please let us know if there is an e-book you need for a course. JKM does not automatically receive course syllabi, so we may not already know about it. However, even if we do know about it, there is a chance that faculty are assigning books not available to us in electronic format. We will do what we can to help.

We are also happy to consult with faculty (in advance, preferably) on the availability of texts for their courses, in order to improve the likelihood of students having access.

 

Physical books, borrowed from JKM or any other I-Share library, will take some time to arrive once you request an available copy. (A few days, from JKM; usually around a week from I-Share.) Plan ahead!

Once retrieved from the library stacks at JKM, or retrieved from another library's stacks and sent through a delivery service to JKM, your requests will be scanned in and checked out to you in our off-campus facility.

Your requested books will then be delivered to the JKM holds table, by the elevators on the 4th floor of the shared campus building at 5416 S. Cornell Ave.

When your requested books are checked out to you, you will get an email, and you can pick the book up as early as that afternoon—depending on how fast we get to campus that day.

But your book will also simply wait for you on that table, by the elevators, across from the LSTC front desk, until either you pick it up, or we have to reclaim it and return it for you.

Whenever you need help with books or e-books, email us at ihaveaquestion@jkmlibrary.org, and we will do what we can to help!

 

Find Articles in Databases

Your OpenAthens login will also give you access to the many online services JKM subscribes to. You can find most of these listed on our e-resources page, with links that use OpenAthens automatically.

If you go to a publisher or other academic provider's website independently, they may have an "institutional login" link. You can try finding "JKM Library" and, if they have us listed, use your OpenAthens login. This might not get you access to the item you're trying to read, but it's at least a good first step.

While we also subscribe to a variety of useful database providers like JSTOR, most of our subscriptions come through EBSCO. You should always try more than one!

For most general searches, you can try our custom EBSCO search, which covers many of the topic areas relevant to our seminaries, or go directly and search all of our EBSCO subscriptions at once.

For your specific topic areas, you will also want to scroll down our e-resources page and find the relevant databases yourself. We have them sorted by topical categories, to hopefully make this easier.

However, finding full-text links can be a challenge, especially for more recent articles. JKM does not subscribe directly to most online journals, and publishers often withhold full-text versions from our databases for anywhere from 1 to 6 years from date of publication. (Materials older than a certain date may also be unavailable electronically.) 

You can find out what EBSCO databases have access to what journals, for what dates, using our Publication Finder.

And again, if you can't find what you want in full text through EBSCO, you should at least try finding it through JSTOR. (Many of our other electronic resources are not primarily journal article repositories, though you can definitely get good information out of them.)

Furthermore, we have set up our EBSCO databases so that they will provide you with references to materials JKM cannot provide. We want you to remember that you also have access, through JKM, to all of I-Share to request books and, separately, also to the University of Chicago Libraries through your seminaries.

The University Libraries do subscribe, directly or through other collections, to the most current publications available. For their electronic resources, you will need to be physically on their campus, with access to the University's wifi. 

The Regenstein Library has its own wifi password, and you can bring your own device there to use their wifi, or log in to one of their library computers using your CNetID (their equivalent of your OpenAthens login). Contact your seminary's IT department (McCormick, LSTC) for help setting up your CNetID.

However, without being on campus, you can also request scans from any physical book or journal the University Libraries have in their collections. Just search for the item in their catalog, click the "Scan and Deliver" link next to it, sign in with your CNetID, and fill out the form. You will receive an email notification from the University Libraries when your scan is ready.

You can also request that JKM Library staff help you obtain anything that cannot be gotten easily through our databases in full text. This is especially true if you're studying remotely! Email us at ihaveaquestion@jkmlibrary.org.

 

Ask a Librarian for More

We also offer a variety of other services, from research help to classroom support, by direct arrangement with a librarian. Email us at ihaveaquestion@jkmlibrary.org to let our staff know what you need, or contact a specific member of our staff directly.

You can also reach out to our liaison at the University of Chicago Libraries, Dr. Anne Knafl, Bibliographer for Religion, Philosophy, and Jewish Studies. While Dr. Knafl does not work for the JKM Library, she is very helpful and provides excellent research support to our patrons, because you are also patrons of the University Libraries.