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. However, while we do provide course support, we are a separate institution, and our staff have no special access to the seminaries' curricular and course development.

This means that the JKM Library is not informed by default of any courses being taught at either seminary. We do our best, but 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.

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.

Students | Faculty

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.

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!

Faculty

Faculty members are responsible for all course materials they choose to put on their syllabi. However, the JKM Library is happy to support your work, and we can help you!

We know that your students are going to look to the library in order to find the resources you are asking them to access. Our ability to provide those resources is greatly enhanced when you let us know what they will be in advance! The earlier you ask us, the more help we can provide.

In general, the important considerations in picking course texts are going to be:

does JKM have them electronically;
can JKM purchase them electronically, with enough license "seats" for all users; and
how many physical copies are also available in I-Share for students who want one?

While Regenstein access means sometimes an extra copy or two, often those are also in use. Membership in I-Share has long provided us with a serious advantage over access to the University Libraries alone, and McCormick and LSTC are fortunate not to have lost JKM and its membership in this consortium in 2023. We are your library.

When it comes to electronic resources, we cannot license e-books from online retailers, so Amazon availability doesn't count. However, we do have access to a wide range of publishers through our existing e-book platforms, particularly EBSCO and ProQuest.

Also, the JKM Library no longer has the space to provide course reserves. However, the number of people who were using them before the move was vanishingly small, and electronic resources have generally taken over that niche.

If you have in your possession a relatively hard-to-get source that you need scanned, within the limits of copyright, 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.

Licensed Electronic Resources

The JKM Library is the only library providing McCormick and LSTC students with remote access to electronic resources, which they can access from anywhere using their OpenAthens login.

While you, and they, can also obtain guest access in-person from other academic libraries like Regenstein, you cannot get remote access from any other library without institutional affiliation.

Electronic resources are licensed for use only by the affiliated patrons of the library that licenses them; sharing beyond that is a violation of copyright. The ability of guests to access resources while physically in a given library is the only functional loophole around that restriction.

For every electronic resource you will need that JKM doesn't already have, we must purchase a license to cover as many users as we can, and we must then integrate that resource into our systems to make it available. This is costly and time-consuming, and if it can happen before the semester starts, so much the better for everyone!

JKM is also the only library providing you and your students with access to the resources of the I-Share network, so that your classes can borrow physical copies in quantities no single library has available on-hand.

Consult a Librarian!

JKM Library staff are happy to consult with faculty members regarding the existing and purchase availability of resources they would like to use during upcoming semesters.

We can help you choose resources that will be available to your students, and help make the resources you want to use available to you and your students without having to purchase them retail.

We are also happy to help you obtain scanned PDFs of any material you may need, within the limitations of copyright law, whether from JKM's holdings, the I-Share network, UChicago's "Scan and Deliver" service, or the wider OCLC WorldShare network.

How do I ...