Letter from the Head Librarian of the School of Theology Library

Updated letter sent to STH students on March 18, 2020

Dear STH Students,

As you are aware, we’re in the midst of an unusual period with all classes being held remotely due to the threat posed by the Covid-19 virus. I expect a lot of you are experiencing some trepidation and anxiety, especially with respect to how you are going to move forward with your studies and research. I am writing to you to let you know about measures we are taking at the Theology Library to support you during this time, especially as your coursework and research moves into an online environment. Don’t worry, we’re here to help!

In light of the threat posed by Covid-19, Boston University has directed us to move to an exclusively online environment. The Theology Library will no longer be open, effective Wednesday, March 18, at 5 pm.   
However, library staff will still be working during this time to provide as many services as we can to our patrons. Reference services will be available, Monday-Friday, 10 am – 9 pm, Monday-Friday. To get reference assistance from a library staff member, please use our reference email, sthref@bu.edu.

The library’s online catalog at www.bu.edu/library will continue to be available for you to use, and we are working to make as many of our resources available online as possible. We already have and will continue to purchase more e-books, and most of our journals are already available online as e-journals. If you need help searching the catalog, don’t hesitate to reach out to us for help – that’s what we’re here for, and the library staff will continue to work remotely through this time period.

We are also creating a number of online library guides at http://library.bu.edu/TheologyGuides to help you find what you need as you do your research, and these are being updated to direct you to resources available online. We have both subject guides on various topics (Biblical studies, church history, missions and missiology, for example) and guides that are being created to support specific courses.

Finally, even if the resource you need is not available online, we may still be able to help you get access to it. We are extending a document delivery service to all students through ILLiad. Using this service, you may request scans of book chapters, portions of books (up to 10% of the total pages of a book – so if the book is 100 pages, we will scan up to 10 pages) and journal articles – and we will email the scan to you. We will do this for any book on our shelves.  Awesome, right? Please note, however, that because of copyright law, we cannot scan an entire book and email it to you – only single chapters or a set of pages. Since we expect that many of you may be using this service, please be patient as your request may take up to 3-5 days. And obviously, as things are changing rapidly, we will offer this service only so long as we are able to.

So, how do you make a request for this service? Go to the following page for instructions and to place your request:  https://www.bu.edu/sthlibrary/coronavirus/document-delivery-and-scanning-on-demand/. And again, please don’t hesitate to email us at sthref@bu.edu if you would like some assistance with the process.

Please know that the Library staff is here to help you. This is a new and unsettling reality we’re moving into, but we can still support one another during this time. So please, stay safe, minimize direct social contact as much as you can, and reach out to us (virtually) – that’s what we’re here for. And please check out the web page we have that goes through the changes we’ve made to library services during this time at https://www.bu.edu/sthlibrary/coronavirus/ as well as our social media feeds, which you can see on our homepage, www.bu.edu/sthlibrary.  And again, don’t hesitate to reach out to us with any questions or concerns you have – we’re here to help you.

Best,
Amy

Amy Limpitlaw
Head Librarian
Boston University
School of Theology Library
ael23@bu.edu, 617-353-1321