The core function of the Library is to provide our scientific community with a wide array of resources. These predominantly take the form of:
We also provide many other resources which you many not be aware of or familiar with. To learn more about the resources available to you through the library, read on below, and please come speak to any member of our staff, or email us at libraryhelp@cshl.edu.
The CSHL Library maintains extensive subscriptions to many of the most prominent scientific journals and publishers. Through our subscriptions, you will be able to access almost any research paper you could wish with the click of a mouse. And any article you might want that we do not have immediate access to, we can request for you through InterLibrary loan and have within 24 hours (typical turnaround time).
To navigate journal subscriptions, you may be used to long alphabetical lists of journal titles to scroll through. But those have gone the way of mouth pipetting and Sanger sequencing. Please give a warm welcome to our journal management system, BrowZine!
Inter-Library Loan (ILLIAD)
If you do come across an article you would like access to in a journal we do not subscribe to, it is very easy to get the article through InterLibrary Loan.
ILLiad is a simple, automated system for requesting copies of articles. When you first arrive at CSHL, you will need to do a one-time sign-up for the system, which our ILL-Librarian will help you with during your Library Orientation. After that one-time sign-up, you will be able to request articles seamlessly.
For more information on how to use ILLiad, please refer to our LibGuide on the subject, or email Jannette D'Esposito at desposi@cshl.edu
The Library has access to thousands of E-books from multiple suppliers, including Springer, Elsevier, Wiley, Oxford, and E-book Central. We also have access to video lectures in the Henry Stewart Talks Biomedical & Life Sciences Collection.
There are two (2) main methods for accessing these e-books. From the Resources drop-down menu on the Library website, you can select either "E-Books", or "E-Books by Subject" These will take you to two pages providing e-book access.
The library’s collection of purchased E-Book are in the library’s catalog and that is a great place to start searching for both print and E-Books. If you only want to see the E-Book listings, check the “Search only Electronic Books” box, in the search field of the Catalog.
If you come across an E-book title that we do not own, but that you would like access to please email libraryhelp@cshl.edu and we will try to procure it for you.
The Library is home to a large collection of textbooks, reference books, protocols, meeting abstracts, bound journals, and more - including the entire library of books from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press.
The books are located primarily in the Zinder room on the 1st floor, and the basement in moveable stacks. You can search our Library Catalog to find what you are looking for. If you need assistance, please contact either of our librarians, Paula Abisognio at abisogni@cshl.edu or Jannette D'Esposito at desposi@cshl.edu.
The Library provides two (2) self-checkout stations: one located in the front entrance hall of on the ground floor of the Carnegie building and the other in the basement main collection room. You will need to see Paula for a one-time set-up to get your ID card initialized before you can use them. For more information, please refer to our LibGuide on Borrowing Library Materials.
The CSHL Institutional Repository
The CSHL Library has created and maintains an Institutional Repository, a database which records all scientific output for the Laboratory. Every paper published from CSHL, datasets, conference abstracts, books and book chapters, and more are all cataloged, recorded, and cross-referenced in the Repository. There is even a birthday cake deposited within it. Feel free to ask about it.
You can learn more about our Repository in the LibGuide about it, CSHL Institutional Repository.
A
surefire way to get ahead in grad school and excel is to make sure your experiments work, and to understand why the protocols call for the steps they do. That's why the Library provides access to all of the Cold Spring Harbor Protocols manuals. These manuals have detailed explanations of the steps involved in how to do the latest scientific experiments, what each step is for, and what is going on molecularly, chemically, or biologically in each step. They are a wonderful resource to help experimenters understand their experiments, as well as to provide the information necessary to troubleshoot wayward and recalcitrant experiments effectively.
