The Kisber Library has many ways that you can ask us questions when you’re not in the library. There is the Ask-the-Librarian link on the library homepage. Furthermore, many of the NSCC web classes have embedded librarians where you can email questions about research projects in your classes. And you can email any of us individually using our campus email addresses.

But to make sure that we help you to the best of our ability, we need you to follow three simple guidelines when submitting questions:

• First, our purpose as an academic library is to help you conduct research. We are not allowed to answer the questions you have for homework, but we can direct you to sources that will help you answer them.
• Remember that, in many cases, we have not seen your assignment; therefore, we need you to state your question as clearly as possible.
  • For example, an ineffective question might be: “article on children”
    • Why is this ineffective? We would need the following information before we could provide you with any real help:
      • Is it any article or a journal article?
      • What class is this for? Education? Psychology? Sociology?
      • There are hundreds of thousands of articles on children. What aspect are you interested in?
  • An effective question would be more like this: “I have to write an article summary on children for my psychology class. It has to come from journal. I am interested in male preteens and depression.” This gives us much more to work with!
• Third, we are not miracle workers, and we’re not superhuman. We sleep and have downtime. So don’t send us a question that has to be answered in fifteen minutes because the assignment is due in a hour.  Monday through Friday, we answer questions the same day we receive them.  Questions submitted on the weekends will be answered on Mondays. We take school holidays, just the way you do. So look over an assignment and ask your questions early, so we’ll have time to answer them and you’ll have time to do your research before your assignment is due.