THE LIBRARIES ARE CLOSED, SO WHAT NOW?
This extraordinary situation and the suspension of tuition at university has affected the libraries, which are all closed until further notice. In most cases, teaching is continuing through distance learning. Many students are also writing their bachelor's or master's theses, and this is really challenging without access to academic literature. However, our Academic Library can provide remote access all the materials you would need to study online.
What options are there?
The good news is that all of the external information resources which the university has paid for are accessible even when you are not on campus. You just need to set up remote access on your computer, be it through a proxy in your browser (instructions are given by the library), or by setting up a VPN (instructions are given by CePIT). Remote access is nothing new, and the library has many people who use it. And in recent weeks, hundreds of students and academic staff have been given access. We recommend that you contact the library directly (kniznica@vili.uniba.sk), and they will give you exact instructions on how to set up the remote access, which will give you access to our electronic resources.
Available online resources
On the bottom part of the External Information Resources webpage, you will find credible and freely available resources which are accessible from anywhere and are free. There are thousands of resources from various disciplines. Several of our own teaching staff have also published electronic study material which is freely accessible though our online catalogue. These publications in our library database number in the hundreds. The Faculty of Medicine also has such resources on its own webpage.
The licenced resources contain full-text access to over 300 thousand academic and scientific books from renowned publishers as well as to around 90 thousand journals. The library also has temporary access to Cambridge Journals, where there is a collection of over 350 prestigious journals from the natural sciences, technology, medicine, and the humanities and social sciences, as well as to the Gale Reference Library, where there are over 28 thousand journals, and plenty of e-books, including encyclopaedias and dictionaries.
Several Czech libraries have prepared collections of freely available resources. The staff of our library are working to identify such resources and publish an updated summary on the library website.
There are also online resources through JSTOR, which is an academic database with more than six thousand electronic books and more than 150 journals. However, only part of that database is freely available.
Freely available resources are also accessible through Google, but they may not be very reliable. It is better to try using the remote access options to the university databases instead. We are confident that in spite of the current limitations that you will manage to successfully study and complete your theses thanks to these tips.
Library contacts:
e-mail: kniznica@vili.uniba.sk
Tel.: +421-2-9010 9937, +421-911-42 33 44
The CU Academic Library’s Facebook page