How to Use JKM Library Services

Welcome!

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, because 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 you 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 of 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, whether with your own device or using their computers with your CNetID.

You can and should use our services together!

Find Books with Primo

"Primo" is the name of JKM's online catalog software. 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:

• Search JKM's Library Catalog
• Search All I-Share Libraries

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. download a locked and time-limited version to your device, once you have the right software installed (usually from Adobe).

(The JKM Library cannot work with 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.)

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

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.

If at any point you need help with requested books or e-books, by all means, email us at ihaveaquestion@jkmlibrary.org, and we will do what we can to help!

Find Articles Using 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.

When in doubt, publishers and other academic providers may have an "institutional login" link, where you can try finding "JKM Library" and, if they have us listed, use your OpenAthens login. This might still 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 both!

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 5 or 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 using our Publication Finder.

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

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 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.

However, without being on campus, you can also request scans from any physical book or journal the University Libraries have in their collections, using the "Scan and Deliver" service with your CNetID.

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.