Frequently Asked Questions

This is the website for the Schusterman Library at the University of Oklahoma - Tulsa. Our mission is to serve the students, faculty, and staff on the OU-Tulsa campus.

Our photocopiers are now tied into the PrintOU-T system. For more information on using PrintOU-T, see our PrintOU-T information page.

Tulsa City County Library offers an excellent free service called Learning Express. Learning Express contains online tutorials on subjects such as computer skills (including Microsoft Office software), some school subjects, college prep, GED, adult education, workplace skills, and more. It also offers practice tests for certain occupation exams, GED, ACT, SAT, reading skills, ASVAB, and more. You'll need a Tulsa City County Library card to use this service.

OU staff and faculty can take advantage of our campus's participation in Eighth Floor, a technology and learning center for educators offered by Tulsa Technology Center and Tulsa Community College. Eighth Floor provides training in Microsoft Office software, Photoshop, Web 2.0 and social media topics, and much more. To take an Eighth Floor class, you must register through the OU-Tulsa Human Resources Department. Contact Tricia Staires for more information.

You can also take advantage of some other online tutorials to brush up your basic skills. Here are some resources that others have told us have been helpful for them. (The Library has not tested these tutorials.)

• Word 2010 Basics
• Excel 2010: Various YouTube tutorial videos
• Create a basic PowerPoint presentation quickly: You-Tube video tutorial
• Outlook 2010 Basics

Endnote has a fairly long training video that talks about the various things you can do, including manual data entry. Although the video is long, it has a table of contents so that you can go directly to a specific portion. You can get to that video here:
http://endnote.com/training/tutorials/EndNoteX4/EndNote_X4.asp.
When the video opens, after it starts, look on the menu in the left margin and choose "Manual Data Entry."
You can also go to this page: http://endnote.com/support/ensupport.asp for more EndNote help documents.

Yes, by finding the document in a library database and selecting the Export option. This exports the citation into EndNote (or any other bibliographic citation manager.)
Sometimes you can import the PDF and automatically populate the fields, and sometimes you can't. To import the PDF (and to see if the citation information populates) all you have to do is File -> Import -> File in EndNote X4, make sure you choose the PDF option, and follow the prompts. Many of the new PDFs that the big publishers are providing include the metadata (which is the information about the article that usually ends up in a citation) as part of the PDF. So you'll have good luck with more recent articles from larger publishers. Otherwise, you'll have the pleasure of manually entering the fields for the citation.

The OU Schusterman Library is open to the public with certain restrictions. 

• Members of the public may come into the library and use the two computers designated for public use as long as those two computers are available and not in use by a student. The computers have restricted access and are designed for research and educational purposes. You can be logged in to our public terminals for up to one hour a day.
• You can come into the library and use any of our databases, and read any of our print materials and make photocopies at your own cost. We sell guest printing cards at the front desk, and the minimum amount is $5 plus tax.
• We do not offer borrowing privileges or issue library cards to members of the public.

Yes, you can get to the library’s databases (to find journal articles) and to our e-journal subscriptions off-campus. Enter your email account username and password when you are prompt to do so at the bottom of an interim page which displays when you click on the library resource. This takes you into all e-resources and you should not be prompted again for your user information.

Yes! One of the best ways for students to learn information literacy skills is in the context of research assignments for their classes. To support this, the OU-Tulsa librarians are able to consult with faculty members on class presentations customized to individual courses or academic disciplines on:
• creating research strategies for projects
• finding, selecting, and evaluating information resources
• using electronic resources, including high-quality Internet sites
This works best when librarians collaborate with faculty members for research assignments designed for the course. Librarians can also create bibliographies of pertinent research sites and other tools for the course.
To set up a customized instruction session for your class, contact a reference librarian at 918-660-3216. Please complete and submit the Instruction Request form.

If your department or degree is a Health Sciences degree, click this link. If your department or degree is an OU Norman degree, click this link.
Next, type the full journal title or name or the journal in the search box. This may be listed in your citation as the Source or ”SO:”. Click Search. (Do not use journal abbreviations.)
To find the e-journal subscription, look for a grey box with the journal’s title at the top. Look for one or more links below. The years listed to the left of each link are the years covered in the e-journal.
you will find a Locate the title of the journal (if available). Click on any database or journal web site links under the journal title that correspond with the publication date of your article. Drill down to the article level by finding the publication year, volume number and page number until you locate your citation. Click on the PDF or HTML icon to view, print or email the full text.

Yes! Check out our class workshops list for the topics and dates of this semester’s instruction workshops. Most workshops are an hour and a half long and are held in the computer lab in room 1C65.

We offer a variety of classes each semester that are designed to help students learn to use the resources we have here at the library. See our schedule for this semester’s classes.
In addition, you’re welcome to stop by and ask questions or call 918-660-3220 for an appointment with a reference librarian.

OK-Share is a cooperative agreement among Oklahoma institutions of higher education for sharing of library resources. OU Schusterman Library patrons with a valid library barcode and no overdue materials may obtain an OK-Share card at the Front Desk to use at other participating libraries. You can find further information and a list of participating libraries at OK-SHARE.

We have iPads, Dell Netbooks, DVD burners, webcams, Flip Mino video recorders and digital projectors available for checkout. Students, faculty and staff may check them out for one week at a time, with an option for an additional one-week renewal period. Technology items are subject to overdue fines, and you will be charged $25 for each day the item is overdue. Check at the reference desk for availability and more details.

Yes. Let the Front Desk know if you would like to have a book that is checked out placed on hold. Once the book is returned, we will contact you to let you know it is available.

Drinks with secure lids are allowed everywhere in the library. Food is allowed only in small portions, and only in areas that are away from the computers, the printers, and the collection itself. All patrons are expected to clean up after themselves and to keep their workspaces clean. Any library staff member may ask a patron to remove food from the library at any time for any reason.

Patrons who wish to plan events with food in the library must have permission from the Library Director beforehand.

From a computer that is not on campus you can access OU library databases and e-journals. When using the library web page and clicking on a restricted link you will be asked to enter your OUHSC username or OUnetID and password. Your password is always the same as your OU email account password. If you need assistance with this contact the OU-Tulsa IT Help Desk at 918 660-3550 or tulsait-helpdesk@ouhsc.edu.

Yes. There is wireless Internet access in the library. Please refer to OU-Tulsa IT's page for campus wireless coverage for more details.

The library has two group study rooms for the use of OU-Tulsa students, faculty, and staff. Rooms can be reserved for periods of up to three hours. To schedule a reservation, please consult the library's AskHere Desk at 918-660-3228, or visit one of the staff members at the AskHere Desk.

You can order a book or an article several ways.

• ILLiad - All OU-Tulsa faculty, students and staff can order material through ILLiad, the library’s online ordering system. Create or log on to your ILLiad to order articles, books chapters, and books.
• WorldCat/Firstsearch/ArticleFirst databases - If you have found a book or article through the OU Schusterman Library’s WorldCat, FirstSearch or ArticleFirst database (through our Library Catalogs or Library Databases links), you can use the ILL link next to the citation that will send the request directly to ILLiad. Clicking this link will direct you to the ILLiad logon page, where you can proceed to order the item. The biggest advantage to using this method is that you do not have to type in a citation—all citation information is automatically entered for you.
• Ovid - If you have located an item through any of the OVID databases, available through our Library Databases link, you can use the order link for that item to directly order it. Again, there is no need for you to enter citation information if you use this method. Please be sure to select to have the material delivered to the OU-Tulsa campus or else you will be charged for the material. This request goes directly to your ILLiad account.
• PubMed - Faculty and staff who wish to order citations through PubMed should inquire about using the National Library of Medicine’s Loansome Doc service. Citations that you ordered through Loansome Doc go directly to your ILLiad account. This service is free to OU-Tulsa full-time faculty, resident physicians and staff, and can result in faster delivery of desired articles. Please call 660-3225 to get more information about Loansome Doc.

The library is not able to provide this service. If you are concerned about entering large numbers of citations that you retrieved from PubMed or Ovid, please contact us to find out about quick and easy ordering options.

Full-time faculty should also inquire about how their support staff or graduate assistants can order items on their behalf through ILLiad. Please contact the Library for more information about this option.

To renew your interlibrary loan book, log in to your ILLiad account and click the “Checked out items” option. Then, click on the transaction number next to the book that you wish to renew. Finally, click on the “Request Renew” link to request a renewal. You will receive a confirmation email containing your new due date after the lending library has renewed the book.

Sometimes the lending library will not renew the book. In that case, we will notify you, and you will have to return the book to the OU Schusterman Library.

Our experience shows that many non-OU email addresses have spam-blocking software that rejects library notices. We have found that it is more efficient to use OU email addresses for notification, leading to better overall service to everyone. Also, it is University policy for departments to use students’ OU email addresses.

• When your interlibrary loan order arrives, whether it is a book or an article, the OU Schusterman Library sends you a notice via your OU email address. If you don’t check your OU email address, then you will not see the notice.
• You may have ordered material through the Bizzell Library or Bird Library web sites. Each of these libraries offers its own interlibrary loan and document delivery services. These services are designed for patrons in Norman and Oklahoma City. Therefore, if you placed an order from Bizzell or Bird, that library will be holding your materials in Norman or Oklahoma City.
• If you are located in Tulsa, be sure to use the OU-Tulsa ILLiad service to get materials delivered here. Contact our Interlibrary Loan office at 918-660-3225 for additional help.
• Also, don't forget that you can check on the status of your OU-Tulsa ILLiad interlibrary loan order by logging into your ILLiad account and checking your outstanding request status, which appears on the front page of your account. If you don't see your materials there, call our Interlibrary Loan office for assistance.

To get full text of articles, it's best to order them through interlibrary loan. We have a speedy service--our ILL department is set up to deliver articles fairly quickly for faculty and staff. Here's the link:
http://outulsa.illiad.oclc.org/illiad/logon.html
We can deliver almost any article to you through Interlibrary Loan. It doesn't matter if it's something we have here in the library or something we have to get from someplace else. So if you can't get a pdf online, order it through us.
If you use the library catalog (http://outulsa.worldcat.org/) to search for articles, you can often find links to full-text there; if not, there's a convenient Interlibrary Loan link attached to every article title. The advantage to using that particular link is that it will populate the ILL form for you once you log on.
Also, there are ways to order articles through us while you're searching PubMed or Ovid. These methods are very simple but involve a little bit of up-front setup, so let me know if you're interested and I can show you what to do.

The interlibrary loan service is the way the library delivers articles. To get copies of any article, you should use the OU-Tulsa interlibrary loan service, ILLiad, available here: http://outulsa.illiad.oclc.org/illiad/logon.html. There is a brief one-time registration process that requires a library barcode. If you don't already have a barcode, you can get one at the library front desk (the fastest way) or by filling out the library barcode registration form. Articles generally arrive quickly, usually within a couple of days.

We don't have this book in our library, but if you go to this link from our catalog (http://outulsa.worldcat.org/title/in-a-house-of-dreams-and-glass-becomin...) you'll see information about ordering it from our interlibrary loan service, under the heading "Find a copy in the library," over to the right side of the page. Just click the button marked "Request item through Interlibrary Loan (ILLiad)."

If you're seeing things on the library website that appear to be broken, chances are you're using Internet Explorer 6 to browse the internet. We've tested our site on various versions of Internet Explorer (6, 7, and 8), Firefox, Chrome, and Safari on Macs. There are some minor issues on Chrome and Safari that we'll continue to work on. However, if you're using IE 6, you might think about upgrading your browser. You can find more information on this topic (including an explanation of what browsers are and what choices you have among them) in this short video.
Of course it's entirely possible that something really IS broken. If you think that's the case, let us know by using the Contact Us link below.

You can access VisualDX here or by going to the Bird Library site, selecting the E-Resources tab, and scrolling down to the bottom of the Point of Care section.

You can get to the EBSCO databases (including Academic Search Premier, CINAHL, LISTA, Social Work Abstracts, and SocIndex) by going to the Library Databases link under Research Assistance, and choosing the appropriate database.

We actually haven't had Gold Rush available since the beginning of the Fall 2009 semester - we replaced it with a similar tool from Serials Solution. You can access it from the Find E-journals link in the Find menu.

We used to keep databases and other useful electronic resources on our E-Resources page. You can now find most of the same material under Library Databases.

You can find Up To Date by choosing Library Databases (under Research Assistance on the front page) -> Bird Library Databases -> and choosing Up To Date under the Point of Care heading on the page that appears.

Not everything in Ovid Medline (or most databases) is available full text online.

If the full text isn't available through the databases, you can check to see if we own an electronic subscription of the journals you need the 3 articles from by going to the library home page and doing the following:

From http://library.tulsa.ou.edu/, click Find > Find an article > Find an article in Bird E-Journals.

Type in the name of the journal in the first box and Search.

If there are databases listed when you searched the e-journals, click on one or more of the databases to locate the year, vol. number and issue number and page number of your title.

Click on Full Text icon and print off the article.

If no records are retrieved when you search for the e-journal, you'll need to check to see if the library owns a print subscription of the journal.

Do that by starting at the library home page again and type in the title of the journal in the search box under Find, change the dropdown menu to Journals and Search.

Once you find the record for the journal, scroll down to see if the OU Schusterman Library owns the journal and if so, check the issues and years we own.

If we have what you need, then you'll need to come into the library, find that journal on the shelf (the front desk will help you) and make a photocopy of your article ($.10 per page).

If you can't find it through the e-journals search or the print journals search, then please contact the front desk. Either drop by or call 660-3220 and ask for help with ordering an article.

The library will help you order articles or books you need that we don't have at no cost to you. You do this by using our online order system called ILLiad.

If you will tell the front desk you need help signing up for ILLiad, they will walk you through the steps.

OVID has several databases, including Medline, which is the premier health sciences database in the world with over 20 million indexed items. It is maintained by the National Institutes of Health and the National Library of Medicine and is the most comprehensive source of research articles available. Medline is MUCH more than review and is probably the best source for research. You can also access Medline through PubMed, so either one would work as a source for research articles.
There are several databases in OVID besides Medline, including the Cochrane databases for evidenced-based medicine, International Pharmaceutical Abstracts, Embase (another good health sciences database), databases dealing with allied health and complementary medicine, ERIC (which is an education database), and PsycInfo. In EBSCO, another set of databases we have, you will find nursing-related articles in CINAHL.

Use Dynamed, Ovid, PubMed
1. Start at the OU Schusterman Library web page (http://library.tulsa.ou.edu/).

2. Click on Ovid

3. Select the first Medline database.

4. Run your search as usual, and then limit your results in one of these ways:

Limits (green box)

The Review Articles box:
Restricts retrieval to articles which are reviews of a subject. These includes: Review Literature; Review of Reported Cases; Review, Academic; Review, Multicase; and Review, Tutorial.

“EBM Reviews” drop down selections:

• Evidence-Based Medicine Reviews
Restricts retrieval to those articles or studies that have been included by the Cochrane Collaboration when creating a Topic Review or articles that have been reviewed in the ACP Journal Club or BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine publications or in the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effectiveness (DARE). This limit also retrieves the Topic Review itself.

• Article Reviews (ACP Journal Club)
Includes ACP Journal Club or BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine publications and restricts your retrieval to reviews of individual studies or articles.

• Article Reviews (DARE)
A limit to Article Reviews restricts your retrieval to reviews of individual studies or articles.

• Topic Reviews (Cochrane)
A limit to Topic Reviews will restrict your retrieval to those articles and studies which were "included" in the creation of a Cochrane review on a topic. Use this limit if you are interested in restricting your retrieval only to reviews which have been used in the creation of a Cochrane Topic Review.

These EBM Databases: Include These Publication Types
All EBM Reviews Ovid EBM databases combined, recommended
ACP Journal Club Clinically relevant studies
DARE Critical assessments of systematic reviews
Cochrane Database of Review of Effectiveness Systematic reviews and protocols
Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials Definitive controlled trials

Additional Limits Button (grey button in the green limits area)

Subject Subset, chose:
Systematic Review

Publication Types, chose
Meta analysis
Multicenter studies
Randomized controlled trials
Controlled clinical trials

Evidence-Based Medicine Reviews box:
Restricts your retrieval to those articles or studies that have been included by the Cochrane Collaboration when creating a Topic Review or articles that have been reviewed in the ACP Journal Club or BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine publications or in the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effectiveness (DARE).

All EBM Article Reviews box:
Restricts your retrieval to those articles for which a review exists in either the ACP Journal Club or DARE databases.

Clinical Queries box:
Sensitive (i.e., most relevant articles but probably some less relevant ones), Specific (i.e., mostly relevant articles but probably omitting a few), or Optimized (i.e., the combination of terms that optimizes the trade-off between sensitivity and specificity).

Locate specific types of document:
• Systematic Reviews/Meta-Analyses (Cochrane Reviews and DARE in Ovid)
• Critically Appraised Topics (ACP Journal Club in Ovid)
• Practice Guidelines (National Guideline Clearing House)*
• Consensus Development Reports (http://consensus.nih.gov/

PubMed (searches Medline). Use the Library’s PubMed link more full text articles are available this way.
Apply the following “Additional Limits” to narrow results to EBM articles: Subsets, Systematic Reviews, Publication Types, Meta analysis, Practice Guidelines, Randomized Controlled Trials

EBM Web Sites
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) - http://www.ahrq.gov
Centre for Evidence Based Medicine - www.cebm.net
Health Information Research Unit-- McMaster University - http://hiru.mcmaster.ca/
Consensus Development Reports - http://consensus.nih.gov/
Clinical Decision Making Calculators - www.fammed.ouhsc.edu/robhamm/cdmcalc.htm

Yes! Stop by the library and ask for help. Any of the staff at the Front Desk can help you with your research. You can also email one of our reference librarians, toni-hoberecht@ouhsc.edu or lynn-yeager@ouhsc.edu, to make a research consultation appointment.

Click on PubMed under Quick Links on the library’s E-Resources page. Under More Resources, click Journals Database, enter the title abbreviation in the Search box and click GO for a list of choices.

The journal volume/issue may be on a red cart to be re-shelved or in use by another patron in the library.
Inquire at the Front Desk about the journal. We may not have received it yet, but it may be available online. The journal may be at the bindery, or it may be shelved in Storage.
If you can’t find the journal you can order the article through ILLiad, the library’s interlibrary loan system.

First, check the status of the book in the OU-Tulsa catalog to see if it is listed as “checked out”. Do this by locating the book in the catalog and clicking on the title to open the full record. Scroll down to check for this information at the bottom of the record. If the book is available and you cannot find it on the shelf, try doing the following:
Try scanning by the call numbers of a few books to either side of where the book should be on the shelf. Despite our best efforts, books are sometimes shelved incorrectly.
Look on the red book carts located throughout the library and by the copy machines. Another patron may have consulted the book recently and placed it there to be reshelved.
Ask a staff member at the library Front Desk for help.

We encourage appointments to ensure that we can dedicate a block of time to your issues. However, you can drop in any time during Writing Services open hours, which are Monday through Friday, 8am to 5:00pm, and Tuesday through Friday, 5pm to 7:30pm.
To make an appointment, call 918-660-3103, or 918-669-2886, or email us.

Assistance is available for any academic class assignment, resume, cover letter, article for publication, thesis, or dissertation. The writing consultant concentrates on form, organization, grammar, consistency, and writing style required by the student's academic program.

Grammar and mechanics are rarely the sole cause of writing problems. The Writing Services consultant will teach strategies to the writer and suggest additional study tools, handouts, or reading materials.

The Writing Center has handouts on APA, MLA, and Turabian. The consultant can suggest sources for examples of other citation styles also.

Yes. Papers cannot be printed at the Writing Center.

Yes. It is best to bring the instructor's written directions, class notes on the project, or the textbook/workbook containing the assignment.

You may schedule an appointment at any stage of the writing process.

Yes. Plan ahead. Draft early and expect to have several appointments. Remember, the Writing Center cannot spend longer than 30 minutes with you if there are several students wanting assistance on the day of your appointment. Also, only one appointment may be scheduled at one time, meaning students may not schedule back-to-back appointments.

Your appointment time depends on how many students need to use the Writing Center on a given day. On busy days, your appointment will not exceed thirty minutes. On slow days, we'll have the option to provide longer appointments.

Often, the problems that appear on page 3 of a paper also appear on page 7. Thus, applying strategies for revision learned during your Writing Center consultation may eliminate the need for a second appointment.

It is important to be on time because an assignment may require the full 30 minute consulting session. If a drop-in student is ready for assistance in your absence and you are 10 minutes or more late, the Writing Services consultant will begin a session with drop-in student whose session may be very short or may require the standard 30 minutes.

This useful report, written by a statistics consultant, can give you some information about how to report your statistics in APA format. This report is a PDF file.

The Interactive Statistical Pages is a detailed and fairly frequently-updated site that contains many, many links to other statistical sites, books, online resources, power calculators, and much more having to do with statistics.

UCLA Academic Technology Services offers a useful chart that allows you to decide what test may generally be used under different conditions, as well as instructions for performing each test in numerous statistical programs.
Also, you might visit this flow-chart (scroll down to the bottom of the page) for deciding what statistical test to use under different conditions. This site also provides a good introduction to non-parametric statistics and helps people decide when such tests are necessary.

The library has the most recent editions of Chicago Manual of Style, the APA Style Manual and the MLA Handbook available on reserve at the reference desk; however, the Writing Center is available to all OU faculty, students to help with citation and formatting questions. In addition, they list a variety of helpful resources on their website.
The library Front Desk staff will do our best to help with Word, PowerPoint or any other software questions but is not able to handle all technology questions.