Getting the Most Out of Your Library

Your instructor may have asked the library to put either a physical copy of the book or a link to an ebook through Course Reserves. Some books will need to stay in the library to use, but others can be taken home for a short amount of time, e.g., three days. To find your book, you can search by

• course number (i.e., CHM 333),
• instructor's name, or
• book title.

Some books may be available as an ebook through the library, and most of those ebooks can be saved as PDFs by the chapter (though it depends on the database). Sometimes your instructor will even link to the book in you Canvas course. 

For more help check out our YouTube playlist of tutorials for specific ebook databases and our user guide for Ebook Central.

There may be a physical copy of your textbook or required reading in either the UM-Flint or UM-Ann Arbor libraries' collections. We can't buy every textbook for every course, but we buy some when the instructor asks us to. More than likely it will be an older edition, but check with your instructor if older editions are acceptable. Books from the Ann Arbor campus libraries can be sent to Flint through the Get This service, but it typically takes a couple of days.

Books can be searched for in two ways: through our homepage search box and through the library catalog. See the following playlist for video tutorials on how to search both ways.

We have connections to libraries across the world and they can send us a physical copy of a book (textbooks included). However, it takes longer for those books to arrive in Flint and you may not be able to keep the book for the entire semester. The loan is on the terms of the lending library, so if the book came from the University of Illinois, we have to abide by their borrowing rules. 

Find more information and tutorials on our ILL webpage.

If your instructor is using "popular" or non-textbook books or films, try your local public library! They might have either physical or digital versions of them. In Genesee County, both the Flint Public Library and the Genesee District Library have great collections, so check them out!