The NCSU Libraries are here to help you succeed in your distance education courses, providing services to make completing your assignments and research as easy as possible. Let’s explore the Library services that every distance ed student should know about. We’ll review how to get books and articles delivered to you, how to get help from a librarian, and how to learn more about the research process on your own! Just because you are not on campus doesn’t mean you can’t get books and articles from the library. Tripsaver -- our interlibrary loan and document delivery service -- will send you books and articles from our own collections, or from other libraries if we don’t have what you need. The Tripsaver website is www.lib.ncsu.edu/tripsaver. The first time you use Tripsaver, be sure to select “Distance/Extension” as your Pickup Library, so we know you will need your items sent to you. Tripsaver will send almost any book or article from our collection to distance ed students either through the mail or electronically via email. Books we cannot send include reserves, course texts in our textbook collection, and reference items. Tripsaver is a free service. We do not charge students when we send a book, and we include a pre-paid return postage label for you to return the book to us free of charge. For more details on how long you can keep a book and how many times you can renew it, see our Borrowing Guide. If you need something that we don’t own ourselves, just put in a Tripsaver request, and we will find it at another library and borrow it for you! Tripsaver’s interlibrary loan borrowing periods vary, since they are set by the lending library, and renewals must be requested by contacting the Tripsaver staff in advance of the due date. If you have any questions about the Tripsaver service or your Tripsaver request, staff are more than happy to help you! You can reach them via email at library_tripsaver@ncsu.edu or by phone at 919-515-2116. Next, let’s take a look at the Libraries’ Ask Us page. This page contains all the information you need to get help from someone at the library. We receive all kinds of questions via chat and email, from how to find specific resources, to getting started researching a topic. If you need an immediate answer to a question, chat, phone, and text are the best ways to get in touch with us. These services are available 24/7 except for Friday and Saturday nights. You can email us questions as well. We generally respond to email within the business day. From the Ask Us page, you can also request a research consultation. These appointments can be in-person on-campus, if you’re in the area, or they can be virtual. Our subject specialists regularly schedule research consultations online for distance education students. Please don’t hesitate to Ask Us if you have any questions at any point in the research process or while you’re using library services. We’re here to help you be successful at NC State! We understand that using the library and doing research can sometimes be overwhelming. So, we’ve made tutorials to help you learn how to use our library. We have “how-to” videos that show you how to find articles and books using the Libraries website. And we also have videos that cover larger research concepts - like evaluating sources, picking a good research topic, and understanding literature reviews. If you are wondering what library resources are going to be most useful for your courses, we’ve got something to help you out: Library Course Tools. There is a Library Course Tools page for every single one of your classes, with links to relevant article databases, access to your course reserves, contact information for your subject specialist librarian, and other useful library resources. If you need any more information on using the NCSU Libraries collections or services, or how we can support you as a distance ed student, please don’t hesitate to Ask Us!