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Do you use an instant messaging service like Yahoo IM or AIM? If so, add Swarthmore's Reference Librarians to your buddy list!

AIM: swatlibrary
Yahoo IM: swatlibrary

Ask us questions when you're in your dorm room and don't want to hike over to McCabe or Cornell. Ask us questions when you've found the perfect computer in the building and don't want to risk leaving it for someone else to use. Ask us questions whenever you're online. We're usually online whenever someone is sitting at the reference desk - roughly 10 am to 10 pm during the week and shorter hours on the weekends.

For more help, head to our Get Help web page.

If you do not have an IM client installed on your computer, try one of these web-based services:

AIM Express
Yahoo IM on the Web
Meebo: Allows you to connect to 4 IM services at once, including AIM and Yahoo.

Did you know you can browse our video collection in Tripod by country or genre? Genres include Adventure, Animated, Gay and Lesbian, Romance, Documentary, Science Fiction and more.

Just look for the drop-down boxes on the Video/DVD tab in Tripod to start exploring.

From there, you can also link to our New Videos and More Video Resources to see what we've bought recently and explore film and video resources.

Need to find info fast? Try xreferplus, a one-stop source for online reference books in a wide array of subject fields.

Dictionaries in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Latin, German, and Italian! The Collins World Atlas Gazeteer! The Great American History Fact-Finder! Barron's New Food Lover's Companion! Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary! Quotation guides, religious texts, and even a crossword puzzle solver... these are some of the 177 tools available through xreferplus.

Give xreferplus a whirl. You'll be glad you did.

Did you know that you can get tables of contents and search results from ProQuest Research Library delivered to your inbox on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis?

Simply browse to the Publications tab, find your journal, and click the yellow "Set up alert" button at the top of the journal's page.

You can also save your favorite searches and have "alerting" emails sent when new articles are published on your topic. Just click the yellow "Set up alert" button at the top of your search results screen.

ProQuest Research Library offers citations and full-text articles from thousands of academic and popular journals on all subjects, from 1971 through today.

New! If you use the Mozilla Firefox web browser, you can now search Tripod directly from the search box on your Firefox menu bar.

We've created an easy-to-install search plugin that will assist you. Try it today!

The Bryn Mawr College Libraries have new hours for the summer! Read all about them on our Hours page.

Also: Saturday reference help at Canaday!! Thanks to a Mellon grant, a reference librarian will be available at Canaday Library on Saturdays (May 21, May 28, and June 4) and a Sunday (June 12) during the first summer school session. Reference hours will be 1:00 - 5:00 PM. Please come see us!

Weekend reference hours for later in the summer will be announced soon.

If the Tri-Colleges do not own a book you need, or if all of our copies are unavailable, then you can search for it in a number of regional academic library catalogs and request it yourself.

Click on in Tripod.

The barcode number on your ID card is your "patron ID" to access E-ZBorrow. Once you have searched the database and found the book you need, click on the blue "Request" button and follow the E-ZBorrow instructions. Circulation and reference staff are available to help with this process.

Most E-ZBorrow books are delivered within 3-5 days. When your books are available for pickup, the library will send you an email message. E-ZBorrow books circulate for 28 days. You may renew books yourself through Tripod and should return E-ZBorrow books at the library from which you received them.

For books not available in E-ZBorrow, use our Interlibrary Loan service. Please note that journal articles are not available through E-ZBorrow.

Questions?

Did you know that most library items can be renewed online? That’s right! You don’t even have to leave the comfort of your room.

In Tripod, click Login. Enter your name and 14-digit library barcode number.

Now click on the link, “Items you have checked out”. You have the option to renew all or selected items. If an item can not be renewed, you will get a message in RED indicating why not.

Tip: If you have lots of items checked out, use the “Sort by Due Date” button. That will bring the current due items to the top.