Library Services

The Souvay Memorial Library offers a document delivery service--that is, the library will scan print materials from our collection at your request.  Simply ask a librarian or use the contact form to send us the citation or catalog link of the item you want scans from, and a list of page numbers.

This service is perfect for:

• Faculty who want to share PDFs of required readings with their classes and post them to Populi, Kenrick's learning management system.  
• Faculty or seminarian researchers who would prefer scans of articles or book chapters that are otherwise only available in print, especially in non-circulating journals and reference works.
• Thesis-writers from other dioceses who would like to take some of their research home with them, but do not want to carry lots of books and cannot take bound journals with them.

Under US copyright law, libraries can make digital reproductions of items in their print collections even if those items remain under copyright, under the principle of "Fair Use," which supports private study, scholarship, or research.  However, there are limits to what libraries can scan:

• The library cannot scan an entire book within copyright and make it available or downloadable in its entirety.
• The library also cannot scan several chapters out of a book in a single document delivery request.

What the library can scan:

• Journal articles.
• Individual essays from conference proceedings, Festschriften, or edited volumes.
• A single chapter from a book that falls within copyright--i.e. most books published after 1927.
• Extracts from a book under copyright, so long as those extracts are not more than 10 percent of the total book.   

• If you are collegian or pre-theologian, you have library privileges at Saint Louis University (SLU).  Some faculty also have SLU privileges.  If you do, you can use SLU's document delivery service to request scans of items from SLU's collections by logging into ILLiad using your SLUnet credentials. 

• We are happy to make scans from older items from our collection.  But if you want a scan from something published before 1927, first make sure it has not already been digitized.  The following sites have millions of older books freely available online:
  • Google Books
  • Internet Archive
  • Hathi Trust