Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery

Beginning Wednesday, April 13, 2011, catalog account access for Special Borrowers (including alumni card holders, high school card holders, and Friends of the AOK Library & Gallery) will be restored with some minor changes. After clicking on the "My Library Account" link you will be taken to a page to select your campus. Scroll to the bottom of the list to select "Other" - DO NOT select UMBC.

You will then be asked to log in as before with your 14-digit barcode number and last name.

Note that this procedure will not work for current UMBC students, faculty, and staff.

Please contact the Circulation Department at 410-455-2354, e-mail circlib@lists.umbc.edu or the Reference Desk at 410-455-2346, e-mail ref@lists.umbc.edu if you have any problems with this new system.

Beginning Tuesday, April 5, UMBC is instituting single sign-on for Library resources. This means that once you have logged into myUMBC you will be able to access your catalog account, Research Port, and our other electronic resources without an additional log in. All Library resources will be accessed using your myUMBC username and password instead of your 14-digit Library ID.

• Will this change the way I renew books or check my catalog account?

  You will still renew books through your catalog account, but the log in process will be different. After clicking on the "My Library Account" link you will still be asked to select your campus. After selecting UMBC, you will be taken to a standard UMBC log-in screen where you will log in with your myUMBC username and password. This last step will be bypassed if you are already logged into myUMBC and you will be taken directly to your catalog account.

  Special borrowers and alumni card holders are currently unable to access their library accounts. We are working on this problem and hope to have it resolved soon. In the meanwhile, please contact the Circulation Desk at 410-455-2354 or e-mail circlib@lists.umbc.edu if you need to check due dates or renew items.

• Will this change the way I access Library resources (article databases, e-journals, etc.) from off-campus?

  There will be no change if you use the UMBC VPN for off-campus access.

  If you access Library resources directly from the Library's website, or if you use Research Port for off-campus access, the log in process will be different. As noted above you will still need to select UMBC as your campus, but from there you will be taken to a standard UMBC log-in screen where you will log in with your myUMBC username and password. If you are already logged into myUMBC you will be taken directly to your selected resource once you select UMBC as your campus.

  Some patrons have reported receiving a message stating that their account has expired when trying to access Research Port through single sign-on. If you receive this error message please send the following information to Janet Hack:

  • Your name
  • Your campus ID
  • Your Library ID (from your myUMBC Profile)
  • The 14-digit number above the barcode on your UMBC ID card
  • Please indicate if you have ever used a different 14-digit number to access Research Port

  If you are not able to access Research Port through single sign-on, please try using the UMBC VPN for access. See our page at http://aok.lib.umbc.edu/services/remoteaccess.php for more information on using the VPN.

• Will this change the way I use Interlibrary Loan (ILLiad)

  ILLiad is not part of the switch to single sign-on. You will still need to use your self-selected ILLiad username and password for all ILL requests.

Thank you for your assistance as we work our way through the unanticipated problems encountered during the switch to single sign-on. We hope that this change will ultimately make it easier to access Library resources. Please send any comments or concerns to Janet Hack, or contact the Reference Desk at 410-455-2346

Looking for a safe place to store your belongings while studying in the library? Use our online application forms and apply to use one of our Lockers or Study Rooms.

Any current UMBC student can submit a locker application; Study rooms are available for Graduate Students, Faculty, and Staff. There is no fee to use the lockers or study rooms.

For more information, see our website at http://aok.lib.umbc.edu/study/ or contact the Circulation Department at 410-455-2346.

The Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery is pleased to announce the release of our new mobile-friendly website. On this site you can check the library's hours, find available computers, get help from a reference librarian, and even search the library's catalog.

To access the site, use your mobile device to browse to aok.lib.umbc.edu/m/.

More features are in development, and if you would like to suggest a service or feature you would like to see added to the mobile site please send it to the Web Services Librarian.

The Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery is proud to announce the launch of UMBC's Digital Collections. Featuring images and publications from across campus, this new resource will increase access to our unique holdings and expand the possibilities of use by faculty, staff, students, alums, and external researchers.

The Digital Collections website includes images from the Special Collections Photography Collections including Lewis Hine's child labor photographs, George Bretz's coal mining photographs, Civil War photos, and other important collections; selections from UMBC publications and photographs; electronic theses and dissertations starting in 2007; promotional materials from the Theatre Department productions (1967-2009); and the digital archive of The Retriever Weekly. New collections and images will be added throughout the year.

Access to the Digital Collections is available from the Library homepage or directly at http://contentdm.ad.umbc.edu. Training sessions for faculty and staff are scheduled for October 5th and October 13th; please sign up through the UMBC Training registration calendar. A student training session will be held October 14th. Librarians are also available for department or class focused instruction sessions.

Library staff would like to thank Linda Seguin, Janet Lee-Smeltzer, Sharon Favaro, Michael Johnson, Kenneth Huether, Gordon Potter, Terry Cook, Chris Corbett and The Retriever Weekly staff, Amy Houghton, and Amy Ciesielski for their assistance in the development and planning of this project.

Did you know that you can use Google Scholar to search for scholarly journal articles? And by properly setting your preferences UMBC students, faculty and staff can even get access to UMBC journal subscriptions.

• Go to the Google Scholar Preferences page (or click on the Scholar Preferences link on the main Google Scholar page)
• Scroll down to Library Links and search for UMBC
• Select University of Maryland, Baltimore County - FindIt @ UMBC
• Click the Save Preferences button

Now you will see a FindIt @ UMBC link next to articles which are available at the Albin O. Kuhn Library. Articles which are available online will have the FindIt @ UMBC link next to the article title; articles which are available in the library will have the FindIt @ UMBC link beneath the citation.

If you also install the LibX Toolbar, the button will appear to guide you to resources available at UMBC.

Questions about using Google Scholar? Contact the AOK Library Reference Department: http://aok.lib.umbc.edu/askus/

The Special Collections and Reference departments are proud to announce a new subject guide for Fall 2008 focused on resources for conducting local history research: Local History Resource Wiki:

A collection of links relating to regional Maryland history with an emphasis on Baltimore. Includes contact and collection information for libraries, museums, historical societies as well as locations of historical newspapers, oral histories, digital images and illustrations, and online documentary projects.

Using UMBC's newly implemented Confluence Wiki software, this wiki is flexible and will continue to grow. If you have any questions or would like to see another institution or project included, please contact Drew Alfgren in Reference at 410-455-2346 or through the web contact form.

Looking for an overview of the library's website? Need to learn how to expertly search the library catalog, catalogUSMAI? Want some guidance in starting your research paper?

For help with all this, and more, try our new library tutorials!

LibX Toolbar: UMBC Edition is a browser extension (also known as a plug-in or add-on) that provides direct access to the Library's resources from any page on the web. In addition to searching the library catalog, LibX allows you to access library subscriptions by right-clicking on any web page and reloading that page via Research Port. LibX also embeds visual cues - the Find It button or the UMBC icon - in web pages such as Wikipedia, Google search results, and Amazon.com to help you locate resources which are available at UMBC.

LibX was originally developed for Firefox, but a beta version is now available for Internet Explorer. The LibX Toolbar is available at http://aok.lib.umbc.edu/reference/libx.php.

It is now easy to access the Library website and all its resources from within Blackboard. Click on the Library tab at the top of any Blackboard page for links to the most popular library resources, including Course Reserves and Subject Guides. You can even search the library catalog, search for journal articles, or contact a librarian.

To see the Blackboard Library tab in action, go to http://blackboard.umbc.edu/