The Patrick Power Library provides a variety of services to support your students' research needs. Our friendly and experienced staff are here to help and encourage students to take full advantage of these services:
Visit the Research Help Desk: Students can visit the Research Help Desk in-person for research assistance. Located on the first floor of the Library. Drop by anytime during our open hours.
Email or Call for Support: Reach out to us by phone (902-420-5544), send us a text (902-702-3057), or drop us an email (research@smu.ca).
The Patrick Power Library has many subject and research guides. Our guides connect students with the most useful resources for their subject area. On our guides, students can find subject-specific books, journals, databases, primary sources, government publications, website links, and more.
The library has many instruction guides available to help students develop their information skills. Our instructional guides cover effective database searching, using the catalogue, advanced search techniques, specific database usage, and more.
Research Toolkit is a series of advanced research skills workshops facilitated by librarians and designed for research assistants, teaching assistants, graduate students, and anyone who is interested in learning more advanced search techniques. Sessions typically take place each May and cover topics such as citation searching, finding and using data and statistics, copyright information, and more.
Students can search or browse topics to find answers about the Library's services, facilities, resources, and more on the Library's Q&A page.
Outside of the Patrick Power Library's regular hours, research assistance is available from Novanet Live Help, an online chat service provided by academic libraries across Nova Scotia. This service is intended for quick questions rather than in-depth research (i.e., location of a particular book or article, library hours, basic database instruction, troubleshooting, etc.). Use the Live Help chat box below or find it on the homepage of the Library's website. For more information about Live Help, visit Novanet's Live Help webpage.