Skip to Main Content

Introduction to the Library

Library Services at Omar Seddiqui Research Library

Services at the library cover a wide variety of needs for students, faculty, and staff at Palo Alto University. If you have questions about any of the library's services--or would like to submit feedback--please contact us at librarian@paloaltou.edu

Collaborative Study Spaces

There are two self-service study rooms in the library that can be reserved. Each room can accommodate approximately fifteen people and come equipped with the following:

  • Large glass whiteboard 
  • Two large tables
  • Two television screens with a microphone, speaker, and iPad with Zoom to facilitate screen sharing and meeting rooms. 

The study rooms can be reserved online at any time or in person during the library's open hours, which you can find here.

To reserve a study room online, please see our page Using Space on Campus.

Reference and Library Instruction

The librarians at Palo Alto University believe in supporting lifelong learning through strengthening information literacy skills. To do this, the librarians offer reference and instruction services. These services are provided for a myriad of reasons:

  • Ensure academic integrity by giving credit to others for their ideas through accurate citations and references.
  • Collaborate and design effective strategies to locate scholarly, peer-reviewed articles and credible works.
  • Identify salient resources that matches the users' information needs.
  • Evaluate the quality, authority, context, and overall relevance of information to help support the studies and research of students, faculty, and staff. 

To set up a consultation appointment or learn more about instruction services at the library, please contact us at librarian@paloaltou.edu. We are happy to assist! 

 

Course Reserves

For students: 
Students who are enrolled in a class utilizing course reserves can access these materials per the the instructor's parameters and in accordance with the library's policies. To search for course reserves, search for your class or instructor through the Course Reserves page. For additional assistance, please reach out to us at librarian@paloaltou.edu

For faculty:
Faculty are welcome to supply their own personal copies or contact the library to place library copies on course reserves. It is advised to give advance notice to place materials on course reserves--preferably four to eight weeks' notice--as items are on a first come, first serve basis. To get started in creating a course reserves collection for your class, please contact the library at librarian@paloaltou.edu

Interlibrary Loan

The library provides document delivery and interlibrary loan services to students, faculty, and staff at Palo Alto University. If you come across journal articles or book chapters you can't access through the databases at the library, making a request through interlibrary loan is an excellent way to expand your search options.

A full guide on how to use the interlibrary loan services can be found here in this guide. To see examples of interlibrary loan requests, take a look at our Google Scholar guide for full-text articles and book chapters

If you have a specific question about an interlibrary loan request, you can contact the department at ill@paloaltou.edu

Purchase Request

If you find a book that is not in our collections, you can make a purchase request through WorldCat Discovery to see if we can add it to our eBook collection. To do this, start at the WorldCat Discovery search box on the library's homepage. Enter the title of the book you're looking for and select the yellow search button. When you're directed to the results page, look at the left side of the page for the search limiters. The Held By Library option's default is always set to Palo Alto University; switch it to Libraries Worldwide to properly update your search. 

 

When you locate the record for the book in question, click on its title. Look for the purchase request link, located on the right side of the page under Access Options

Be sure to fill out all the fields marked with an asterisk and include all the appropriate citation information for the title in question. If you run into any difficulties with completing this form, please contact us at librarian@paloaltou.edu