Additional Services: Alumni Services

Lewis & Clark students, staff, faculty, and alumni may borrow materials from Watzek Library and Boley Law Library with a valid college ID or alumni card. The loan period for books, CDs, and DVDs is 6 weeks, renewable for an additional 6 weeks. There is a limit of ten items at a time. For further information, see Borrowing Info. 

Summit and interlibrary loan are not available for alumni.

The Aubrey R. Watzek Library Special Collections & Archives are available to the Lewis & Clark campus and the larger community of scholars. Complete rare book holdings are included in the Primo, the library catalog. Finding aids for archival collections can be browsed and searched at the Archives West website. Tours of Special Collections and Watzek Library exhibitions are available by prior arrangement. Please contact archives@lclark.edu to request a tour.

Alumni may be particularly interested in Lewis & Clark Digital Collections, which include campus yearbooks and the student newspaper the Pioneer Log. Additionally, there is the Lewis & Clark College Oral History Project, for which currently enrolled students interview and transcribe oral histories of alumni. 

Alumni are encouraged to visit Watzek and use the library's research databases with a guest login and password. Licensing agreements restrict off-campus access to currently enrolled students, faculty, and staff. Off-campus access is not available to alumni. Public libraries often offer remote access to databases and should be contacted directly to inquire about availability. 

Alumni who are not able to visit Watzek are encouraged to try a combination of the following strategies to access scholarly materials.

1. Visit nearby academic libraries. Most college or university libraries welcome walk-in users and permit them to use most of their online resources (electronic books, journals, research databases) on site, just like Watzek; some may offer limited borrowing privileges to members of the community who are not connected with the institution. Library websites and their search tools can usually tell you what electronic and print resources are available. Worldcat is a good tool to help determine which libraries in your area hold a particular item. Contact the library’s reference desk to verify availability of print or electronic resources, and to confirm that you will be able to visit the facility.
2. Visit your public library. Many provide interlibrary loan service for books and articles, though this may not be very prominently advertised; many provide access to databases that can be useful in research. A number of large public libraries extend some services beyond their immediate geographic area to include residents of the state (Multnomah County Library, Los Angeles Public Library, San Francisco Public Library, Denver Public Library, Hawaii State Public Library System, and New York Public Library are all examples—it's worth checking libraries that are not on this list, too).
3. Google Scholar is a free tool for discovering academic literature. It will link to freely available versions of many articles. When seeking a particular book or article, searching for the title and/or author with a regular Google search is another strategy that can lead to an open access version of the article.
4. JSTOR offers several options for individuals and researchers who are not affiliated with a subscribing institution. Open content is now more readily available, and a free account option allows the user to access most of JSTOR's content, up to 100 articles each month. There is also an Individual Research Subscription, JPASS, which allows unlimited reading on either a monthly or annual plan.
5. It may sometimes be effective to contact an individual author to request that a version of the article be shared with you.
6. Ask a librarian to help you figure out what will work in your particular situation.