New Users Guide

Welcome to our Library! Here in our library you will find a wealth of information to support your scholarly efforts here at Cal Poly. We hope you will take a few minutes to go through this guide and learn some of the basics of using our library.

Your Bronco Access Card is your library card: you will need it to check out books. You should also obtain a library password (sometimes called a PIN), which you can create remotely. This PIN/Password allows you to use the Self Check Out Machine to check out books, and most importantly, the PIN/Password allows you to access our databases and electronic journals from home. Look at our about remote access instructions page for more details about this process.

You can familiarize yourself with our building by looking at our floor maps; these guides will tell you about a lot of our physical facilities and amenities.

To look for books, look in our Library Catalog; to find articles, look in our Databases pages. To find out what journals we have available electronically, look at our Electronic Journals list. To get things we don't have in the Library, request materials via our Get Materials Not In Our Library page.

We also have a directory of curriculum related websites, and a large number of specialty subject guides and tutorials. To learn about basic library research methods, see our 5 minute tutorials.

If you still have questions, take a look at our Help Pages - we may have answered your question already. If not, you can come in to the Library, call us (909.869.3074) or use the web to find out all the ways that you can ask a Librarian.

Things to bring with you when you come to the library:

• Paper and pen or pencil.
• A dollar bill to buy a printing/copy card, as well as more dollar bills and lots of small change (the Library has no change).
• USB compatible storage device (flash drive) for storing work or downloaded items. Very few of the library's workstations have floppy drives. None of them have SD card drives.
• Your Bronconame and BroncoPassword; you can use our workstations to the best advantage if you use your bronco identity.

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