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Faculty/Student Research Assistants

Faculty/Student Assistants Cards

The Library provides faculty/student assistant library cards to faculty members who want their student assistants to be able to sign out library materials and/or make copies for them. The card is in both the faculty member’s name and the student’s name, but it is the faculty member who is responsible for all material signed out on the card.   Get an application form at the Circulation Desk or download the PDF file.

Photocopying in the Library

Student research assistants can have a quota for VPrint connected to their Student Assistant ID cards. This will enable them to use the VPrint Printers and Copiers located throughout the libraries. You can learn more about using the VPrint system for printing and copying at the CIS VPrint site. Lost Faculty/Student Assistant Library Cards Lost cards should be reported to Tracy O'Connor, Head of Circulation and Reserves (email troconnor@vassar.edu) or Bonnie Pulver, Circulation Supervisor (email bopulver@vassar.edu.  Questions concerning VPrint should be addressed to the CIS Helpdesk (x7224 or helpdesk@vassar.edu)

Requesting Material through Interlibrary Loan

Student assistants may also use the faculty/student assistant library card to request materials via ConnectNY and/or traditional interlibrary loan on your behalf. Before they can do that, you need to set up an ILLiad account for your assistant. For instructions on how to set up an account, see Setting Up An ILLiad Account for Your Assistant.

Putting Material on Reserve

Training on procedures for putting material on Reserve is available and recommended for Student Research Assistants. Training sessions can be arranged by appointment. Please contact Tracy O’Connor, Head of Circulation and Reserves, for more information on Reserve (email troconnor@vassar.edu)

Research Skills Training

Librarians meet with research assistants to discuss projects they will be doing and resources/skills they will need to complete these projects. Ideally a meeting should be scheduled when the student is actively engaged in a research project as training is most effective when related to a specific task.   It may be useful for the faculty member, research assistant, and librarian to meet together to talk about faculty research needs.

Some examples of skills librarians help research assistants develop or improve:

• Searching online catalog/bibliographic sources to prepare book orders, e.g. finding ISBN; using Books in Print, etc.
• Locating and searching appropriate online indexes and full-text databases
• Locating material in the library
• Identifying and locating U.S. Government documents
• Finding statistics
• Using RefWorks, a bibliographic management tool, to organize and exchange information regarding citations

Have your student assistant fill out and submit the Research Assistant Consultation Request Form  to set up an appointment with a librarian or library staff member for training in use of library resources or services.