Instructor Resources

A common sticking point for Alverno students is the research they are required to do at intermediate and advanced levels of the curriculum. Our subject liaison librarians have a passion for teaching students the information literacy skills they need to think critically about the information they consume, have a voice in the scholarly conversation around an issue, and develop their own understanding of information that will not only help them through the rest of their time at Alverno, but well into their future as professionals and members of our communities as well.

Your liaison librarian will work with you to develop the research instruction that makes the most sense for your class. In the past, librarians have worked with instructors to create:

• whole-class instruction sessions in person and over Zoom
• assignments requiring a one-on-one research consultation with a librarian for every student in a course
• new course materials including course revisions, interactive digital learning objects, and assignments
• targeted tutorials for complex concepts like evidence based practice

We are eager to work with instructors and always open to new suggestions for collaboration up to and including being embedded in your courses. Embedded librarians take on an active role similar to co-teaching and this approach allows for a highly effective blend of the instructor's discipline-specific expertise and the librarian's research expertise.

Contact the librarians to learn more about how we can help you support your students in their learning.

TOPCAT, the Alverno College Library's discovery tool, allows all users with valid login credentials to request physical and digital items from Alverno College Library, other SWITCH Libraries Consortium members, and other institutions in our broader partner networks. 

For more information about finding full text and placing requests through TOPCAT, please visit our Finding & Requesting Resources guide.

The Library maintains a Course Reserve of books and other items assigned in active courses. These items are available to students only and must be returned after 3 days. This collection accrues overdue fines at a rate of $2.00/day to encourage students to return items so that other students in the course can use them. Students must also wait at least one hour after returning a Course Reserves item to check it out again. Students may pay overdue fines for Course Reserves items with donations to the Alverno Food Pantry. Each item donated will remove $2.00 in fines from the student's account.

Items owned by Alverno College Library are added to and removed from Course Reserves at the beginning of each semester (fall, spring, and summer) based on textbook assignments in the Follett Bookstore. Please ensure your assigned items are entered into Follett by the deadlines set by Academic Affairs so that we are able to accurately update the collection. Items that are not assigned to an active course will be returned either to their permanent location in the library or to instructors' mailboxes if they are personal copies. 

To temporarily place your personal copy of an item on reserve, please bring the item to the Library Help Desk. Please be aware that personal copies will receive library markup including permanent stickers and will be treated as normal library items as long as they are in our collection.

Interlibrary Loan (ILL) is the process through which libraries that are not part of the same consortium share materials with each other. All Alverno patrons with a valid account, including community members who sign up for a courtesy card, may use ILL to request materials unavailable through the Alverno College Library or our partner libraries, which include:

• SWITCH
  • Concordia University Wisconsin
  • Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design
  • Mount Mary University
  • Sacred Heart Seminary and School of Theology
  • St. Francis Seminary 
  • Wisconsin Lutheran College
• UW System
  • Eau Claire
  • Green Bay
  • Madison
  • Oshkosh
  • Parkside
  • River Falls
  • Whitewater

Please note that we are often unable to obtain copies of dissertations and theses because many institutions charge even libraries for copies of them. It can be better to reach out directly to the author to ask for a copy, as most will be happy to share their research with someone who is interested in it. For more information, please visit our Interlibrary Loan page.

The library does not digitize materials for instructors to use in their courses. Instead, instructors are encouraged to create their own scans of texts they would like to post in their Moodle courses. The library has several scanners available for patrons to use and instructors may also scan items using a scanning app on their phones such as Adobe Scan. We encourage you to be mindful of copyright restrictions. Scanning and posting a single chapter of a book could be copyright compliant under the Fair Use Doctrine, but posting multiple chapter or an entire book is not. The best course of action is to get permission to use the content from the copyright holder or to use content licensed under an open license like Creative Commons.

Although the library does not digitize audiovisual materials, we validate that the content is legally owned by either the library or the instructor. Media Hub can digitize these materials and place copies on their server for instructor use for a maximum of 30 days. Exceptions apply for video with purchased streaming rights. If you have any questions, please contact Media Hub. 

The Alverno College Library Digital Commons is an institutional repository for scholarly works produced by Alverno College students, faculty, and staff. This includes master's theses, doctoral dissertations, graduate capstone projects, student/faculty research projects, faculty-created Open Educational Resources (OER), and published faculty and staff research.

More information about the Commons can be found on its FAQ page.