Do you and your students know all the ways you can contact a librarian?
Drop by the reference desk (hours)
Live chat
Text 925-291-9699
Call 925-631-4624
Book an in-person appointment
Book a Zoom appointment
Email your subject librarian or askalib@stmarys-ca.edu
*during the academic semesters
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Publishing your research open access...
ensures that researchers around the world can learn from and build on your discoveries
gets your work more citations and more diverse readership (Huang et al., 2024)
prioritizes community over commercialization!
Did you know? The Library has transformative agreements with certain publishers that allow you to publish your research open access in their journals without paying an article-processing charge (APC). (More info)
Even if your article is behind a paywall, we can host your manuscript open access in SMC Digital Commons. (More info)
Want to go open?
Did you know there are AI apps designed specifically to help you find, skim, and connect scholarly articles on your area of interest? (And they won’t hallucinate sources out of thin air.)
These tools include:
Learn more about these tools on the Library's guide to AI Use in Academic Research.
A new edition of the Chicago Manual of Style was just published!
See what’s new in the 18th edition and access the full new edition online through the Library’s link to the Chicago Manual of Style. And the Library's updated Chicago Style cheat sheets will be online soon!
What about APA or MLA style? See our Citation Style Guides for downloadable cheat sheets to MLA, APA, and Chicago–style citations, as well as links to resources for ACS, ASA, Bluebook, CSE, and NLM styles. Share them with students too!
Have a citation question? Send us a chat or drop by the reference desk.
Trying to keep up with election news but keep hitting paywalls? Did you know the Library subscribes to thousands of newspapers and magazines?
Courtesy of the library, get your digital passes to the websites of the:
New York Times
Wall Street Journal
Financial Times
Chronicle of Higher Education
Plus, access articles from the Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, East Bay Times, and thousands more local and national newspapers and magazines through our news databases. Search by newspaper title
The Library provides streaming videos (instructional content, documentaries, indie flicks, world cinema, Criterion Collection, and more) through the following collections:
Embed videos in Canvas, add discussion questions and quizzes, create custom playlists, and more.
See our guide to our streaming video collections for more information, and contact your subject librarian with any questions.
SMC has a new platform for Scholar Profiles! Whether you’re going up for tenure, applying for a grant, or just want to make your scholarship discoverable on the web, now is a good time to document your accomplishments in one place.
Check out your Scholar Profile, and contact your subject librarian to make updates or request a profile.
Once you’ve updated your SMC profile: Have you made an ORCID ID and Google Scholar profile? Check out these resources.
Get books and articles delivered from libraries around the world with Interlibrary Loan
Want a book, article, DVD, or other item that the SMC Library doesn’t have? Get it through Interlibrary Loan!
Requesting items: Start by searching for an item in Library Search. If you don’t see what you need, click Search using Interlibrary Loan > at the top of the screen to get it delivered from another library.
Receiving items: Digital articles and chapters will be sent to you via email, usually within 1–2 business days (Monday–Friday). Print books and media items usually arrive in 4–10 business days. You can check on the status of your request in your library account, and you'll receive an email notification when your item is ready.
Questions? Start a chat with library staff now.
Library resources for your course, embedded in Canvas
Have you noticed the “SMC Library Resources” tab in the navigation of your Canvas course?
This little tab magically detects what course you’re taking and will display relevant library resources specially curated by subject librarians for your course or department, like:
subject-specific databases
guidance for finding books, images, data sets, or other resources specific to your discipline
citation style guides
Contact info for your subject librarian and a live chat box
Questions? Contact your subject librarian or askalib@stmarys-ca.edu.
We librarians have noticed a trend lately: SMC researchers are coming to us with a citation and need help finding the full text. The citation has a plausible title, real authors, and a reputable journal. However, when we dig deeper, the article doesn’t exist as described. It turns out, in these cases, that the citation originated from ChatGPT.
This makes sense, as ChatGPT has been trained to generate language, not look up citations. The latest model can search the web, but it isn’t a search engine.
The picture above is an example we experienced of ChatGPT recommending a book, but then admitting the book doesn't actually exist (though the authors do!).
However, there are apps that harness AI to help you find relevant publications and quickly get the key points so you can choose which ones to dig into further.
Instead of ChatGPT, if you’re looking for research papers on a topic, try:
ResearchRabbit: free; maps papers with related citations
SciSpace and Elicit: free for limited features; they translate natural language into search terms and then identify and summarizes relevant papers, and generate a mini literature review
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