More than nine months into the coronavirus pandemic equals more than nine months outside of school campuses for some of the students. Learning institutions were pushed to find new ways of keeping students on track while far away from schools. Being the largest higher learning institution in the country, the University of Rwanda opted to digitize its library, enabling students to freely access various academic journals and books online. Now, it has become crystal clear that such innovations were so much needed and are here to stay, prompting the university to permit distant access to its e-library which was previously accessed by students only in their campus premises. Known as the Integrated Library Management System, the newly acquired web-based platform eases access to collections of scholarly materials in eight libraries at different UR campuses. UR e-resources are available via different portals such as Proxy, LibHub, and Research4Life among others. How to access resources remotely on Proxy and LibHub To access UR’s e-library remotely, you log in here by entering a username and a password. The credentials are provided by the nearest campus library staff. The login page can also be accessed from the UR library website by clicking on Remote Access to E-resources under the Search and Find tab. Once logged in, click on Integrated Search System which immediately takes you to the university’s directory of electronic resources such as journals, books, standards, and case studies. The directory has a search tool which allows you to enter search terms of topics you are interested in. For instance, if you type ‘Genocide in Rwanda’ in the search box, the following results appear. You can browse through the results by scrolling down to find the most appropriate. Once you find the title you are looking for, you can read online or save the full article on your device by clicking on it and selecting PDF on the right to download the full content. How to access resources remotely on Research4Life It is important to note that e-resources from Research4Life cannot be accessed via the Proxy mentioned above. Research4Life is a global provider of academic content backed by the UN, Yale University and other major global institutions. Research4Life databases include HINARI for health, AGORA for agriculture, forestry, fisheries, climate and food security, OARE for Environment, ARDI for Innovation and Technology and GOALI for Law. To access content on Research4Life, run the following link https://www.research4life.org/ in your browser. Once it’s loaded, click on a login tab. On the login page, enter the Research4life username and password provided to you by your respective campus library and click on the login button. A page showing all databases for different fields of study will appear. Click on the database that corresponds to your discipline. At this point, you can find content by entering search terms in the search box or by browsing through the catalogue. Research4Life also lets you read online or download the content. Alternatives If you want to cut the above process short, alternatively you click directly on the hyperlinks below corresponding to a discipline of your interest. You will still need the Research4Life username and password to login. For health, go to HINARI; for agriculture and related fields, go to AGORA; for environment, go to OARE); for innovation and technology, go to ARDI; and for law, go to GOALI. The University Librarian Dr Robinah Namuleme believes that students will benefit from the remote library, particularly in the light of the Covid-19 crisis. “The library can be exploited and very useful to students. We want to make it accessible and ease remote learning,” she said, stressing the need to encourage and train students to use the online library. Namuleme also revealed that UR plans to introduce a module on Information Literacy, which will be a mandatory course for all students to ensure that they are equipped with diversified skills required to carry out high quality research.
