Librarians are online to assist you seven days a week
UTSA reference librarians answered over 20,000 online queries from faculty, students and staff in 2016.
While not a unique service, this is an extremely high volume of chat questions for an academic library of our size. We believe the reason for this success is the use of a proactive chat system that was developed for online businesses. The system allows librarians to actively offer assistance to people while they are searching the online library databases.
Another possible reason for the popularity of our chat service is the fact that it is staffed by experienced, service-oriented librarians who also teach research skills and select materials for our collection. Our librarians are very familiar with information resources across the disciplines, and more advanced research questions are referred to the subject specialist for the specific field.
Please encourage your students to use the chat reference service, particularly if you give assignments that require students to find authoritative information sources.
The librarians are happy to answer all types of question, whether research-related or not. Here are some common questions.
- I need to find a peer-reviewed article on X topic. Where should I start?
- Is my calculus textbook available on Reserve?
- Can you help me view and print from an e-book?
And a sample question from a faculty member—
- A journal asks me to provide keywords for my article. Should I select keywords from established lists?
If you haven’t used our chat service yet, you can find the chat box in the lower right corner of the library's homepage or any page on our site - including this one! Outside of chat hours, you can leave a question and it will be answered when the service opens the next day.
Chat hours
Monday–Thursday 9 a.m. – 11 p.m.
Friday 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Saturday 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.
Sunday 11 a.m. – 11 p.m.