Research Tutorial for Distance Learners: Home

By the end of this tutorial you will be able to:

• Create useful and efficient searches that give you good results
• Find and retrieve books, articles and other types of information
• Evaluate the information you have found and determine if it is useful or useless
• Use your findings ethically and appropriately
• Know when and where to go for help

Welcome! This tutorial will teach you, the distance learner, how to use the libraries for your assignments, projects and papers. The tutorial is divided into six sections:

1. Introduction
2. Library Services
3. Identifying your topic
4. Finding articles
5. Finding books
6. Using your findings

The IIT Libraries include:

• The Paul V. Galvin Library located on the Main Campus is the largest of all the IIT Libraries.
• The Graham Resource Center (GRC), the architecture library , also located on the Main Campus. Due to the fragility of some items, they may not be available for use outside of the GRC.
• The Institute for Food Safety and Health Library (IFSH) located on the Moffett Campus. The library and collections at IFSH are available only to Moffett Campus students and faculty.
• The Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions Library located in the Tower on the Main Campus.
• The Downtown Campus Library serves the Chicago-Kent School of Law and the Stuart School of Business and has restrictions on some of their materials which limit access to in-library use only.
• IIT's "online library" gives you access to databases and e-books 24/7.

Most of the library's online resources are available from off-campus. In order to use licensed journals, eBooks and databases from non-IIT locations, patrons must first pass through an authentication system. When you click on a restricted resource located on the library's website, you will automatically be prompted for authorization, Students are required to authenticate by entering their student ID number. Faculty and staff must enter their MyIIT username and password. You will remain logged in until you close your web browser.

However, you can skip the authentication step to access the library's e-resources from off-campus by logging in to MyIIT. Once you have logged in to the IIT portal page, click on Library from the menu on the left and then go to Quick Links. 

If you use Google Scholar be sure to set the Scholar Setting to include Illinois Institute of Technology as your primary library link. This will help link you to IIT-subscribed journal content when you are off campus.

If you have any questions or experience problems logging into library e-resources, go to our help page or call 312-567-3616.