NEW YORK—Fordham students pulling all-nighters no longer have to wait until morning to get assistance tracking down research materials. Using a new Virtual Reference service, Fordham faculty and students can confer with a professional reference librarian 24 hours a day, seven days a week via an online chat room.
Launched on Sept. 13, the Virtual Reference service is the result of a partnership between the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities and Tutor.com. The service allows the student and librarian to view databases and websites together, and allows the librarian to send text documents and images to the user. At the end of the session, a complete transcript of the exchange is sent to the student or faculty member.
“We will not only be providing an important and timely service to students,” said James McCabe, Ph.D., University librarian, “we’ll also be giving them lifelong research tools and skills.”
Students or faculty can log onto the service from any location by clicking on the “Ask the Librarian” link on the Fordham library homepage.
The Walsh Family Library, already one of the most wired and technically advanced university libraries in the country, has also added new databases, including an Aristotle Bibliography, the Naxos Music Library and the Social Science Citation Index.
