Study abroad students have access to several useful services provided by the Lafayette Library, including access to subscription databases, electronic document delivery, interlibrary loan, research assistance, and country information.
Visit the library’s research tools page on Countries & Maps to locate background information on the country where you’ll be living and studying.
Lafayette students have access to subscription web-based resources from abroad. Clicking on a link to a subscription research tool (such as Academic Search Premier, JSTOR, or RefWorks) from the Library web site or Library Catalog when you are off-campus will produce a page that prompts you for your Lafayette College Network ID and password. Once you enter the proper credentials, you will be passed directly to the site.
Study abroad students can have journal articles and book chapters from Lafayette-owned materials scanned and delivered as PDFs to their Interlibrary Loan accounts. However, since this service is ONLY offered to Lafayette College students studying abroad, the library needs to know who you are. Please email the Interlibrary Loan department at ill@lafayette.edu to alert us of your study abroad status. Once we have identified you as a study abroad student, when logging into the Interlibrary Loan system, you will see a “Document Delivery Request” option from the main page. Requests are usually filled within 24 to 48 hours.
Study abroad students may submit requests for journal articles and book chapters unavailable in Skillman or Kirby Libraries or in the library at your host institution. Books cannot be requested via ILL while studying abroad. Log in to the ILL system using your Lafayette Network ID and password and use the request forms located there, or send a request directly from the library’s electronic databases, such as Academic Search Premier, Web of Science, and other periodical databases, using the WebBridge feature. Just look for a link to “Lafayette WebBridge” or the WebBridge icon.
Send a research question by email to refdesk@lafayette.edu and receive a response within 24 hours. Students preparing to start researching and writing honors theses when they return from abroad are encouraged to communicate early with librarians. In-person appointments can be arranged via our online form in advance of your return to campus.
The library has also created a number of guides to help students navigate various stages of the research process. Guides are available for: finding articles; identifying and evaluating primary sources; assessing information sources such as articles and websites; citing articles and web pages; and many other topics.
For more information, click here.