Prospector will be down briefly for scheduled maintenance for about an hour starting at 7am on January 17, 2013. Thanks for your patience.

Prospector Development Team

Electronic resources are playing an increasingly important role in Prospector. Although the union catalog is still primarily used for discovering and requesting physical items (books, DVDs, and CDs), e-resources are playing a growing role in the system. Prospector currently has 4 million e-resources (electronic resources) which represents almost 1/3 of its unique holdings. It is estimated that over 1.5 million of these are openly accessible and include items such as government documents (federal and state), ERIC ED reports, agency reports, open access ebooks, open access journals and other free materials. By merely clicking on link a user is taken to the full-text resource. It is sometimes not clear if a resource is free, but users are encouraged to follow links and if they can get in the resource is free.

The Colorado Alliance is making a concerted effort to get interlibrary loan privileges (resource sharing) for ebooks which it licenses.

Some examples include:

Springer ebooks- over 45,000 Springer imprints in science, technology and medicine are available for lending to any Prospector member even though only twelve libraries in Prospector license the package. Borrowing is done like a printed monograph except that the user receives a PDF of the book without DRM

Oxford Scholarship Online (OSO) – Starting in fall 2012, nine Colorado Alliance member libraries licensed this package. As part of the contract, free access is made available to any other public or community college library in Colorado or Wyoming. A site may contact Oxford for free MARC records and access.

Tips

Librarians use the phrase “electronic resource” following the title to indicate if something is digital. So if you want to narrow your search to ebooks or other e-resources when doing “keyword” searches enter your search terms and add the phrase “electronic resource.”

The ability to download e-resources into Kindles, Nooks, iPads, smart phones and other devices is a function of both the device, its apps and the provider of the e-resource. If you can’t figure out how to download something when you get to the full-text of an e-resource contact your home library for advice and help. Your local library is there to help. Remember that not everything can be downloaded into a local device so it may have to be viewed on the host server.

If you find an e-resource in Prospector from your local library you can get in by using your library (or student) card. Remember that public libraries in Colorado participate in the Colorado Library Card (CLC) program where you can visit almost any public library (a few exceptions) and get a card. With these cards you can get additional e-resources from those libraries. Academic libraries normally limit access to their e-resources to faculty, staff and students.

Always feel free to click on links to see if you can get in even if the link is from a library where you don’t have a card. If you gain access to the resource then it is open access for all.

Contact your local library for help and advice

At the beginning of any academic semester students are rushing to get textbooks. Historically, most academic libraries do not collect text books, however, some may be found in Prospector. In addition, many classes have books which are required for class which not be classified as textbooks but are required reading. Many of these can be found and requested through Prospector.

A couple of helpful suggestions for identifying textbooks in Prospector include:

1. Make sure that you are getting the proper edition of the book required for class. Publishers frequently publish new editions in order to keep sales strong and minimize the used book market.
2. If you have the ISBN for a textbook this can be used to search for an exact edition. Just enter this in the search box (without dashes or spaces) to look for a specific title
3. Remember that Prospector allows for a three week loan period with one renewal. This means you can keep a book for up to six weeks. Find out when the title might be needed in the semester. Sometimes you may be using the Prospector version as a tide over if your item is back ordered.  If you need a book for longer, order a second copy (if available) about a week before the first book is due back.  Then return the book that is due back.
4. Prospector supports link-outs to ecommerce sites for ordering new or used books. In the new Prospector interface go to a full-record and look for the Google Preview which will allow you to peek inside a book and make purchases. In the Classic version of Prospector use the “Find More Resources” button to find links to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google and other source
5. Is an ebook available to meet your needs?  Although many ebooks are only available to registered borrowers from a specific library, there are some which can be lent or accessed.  Feel free to just try links, if they work they may be open access.  Otherwise look for copies that are offered from libraries for which you have library cards.

Good luck with the new semester in school.

The Prospector team.

The Prospector system is in the process of being restored but a few remaining items are yet to be fixed.  At the present you may search the system in both the new interface as well as the “Classic” version.  But requesting items has yet to be restored.  This should should fixed in the near future.  Check back soon!

The Prospector Team

As of February 22nd Prospector has been refreshed with new records from every participating library.  The formerly announced missing records from the system have now been restored so that it is an accurate reflection of what is available from each library.

The Prospector Team