Services & Resources for Staff

• Research & Instruction Librarians can meet with you and students who are doing research for your office if you need help navigating research resources.
• Stop by the Frost reference desk or email us at library@amherst.edu to get research help.
• Search for specific journals or newspaper titles (including site access to the Chronicle of Higher Education); you'll be prompted to log in if you're off campus.

• The Library places both electronic material and print material on reserve for courses. We can purchase items courses need that we don't already own or license.
• The Library has an extensive video and audio collection. IT's Academic Technology Services streams video and audio and supports other media for classes.

Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free tool that collects, manages, and formats citations and bibliographies. You can attach PDFs, notes, and images to your references; arrange your sources into collections for different projects or classes; and tag them for easy searching or to jump-start chunks of your writing. Insert citations to Word or Google Docs as you write, and create a formatted bibliography or works cited page with one click!

Check out our Zotero "step by step" guide to try it out yourself, sign up for a library workshop to get started, or make an appointment with a research librarian for troubleshooting and pro tips—it's especially useful to get started with it early in a big project. Questions? Ask a librarian, at the reference desk or virtually!

• The Archives & Special Collections, located on A-Level of Frost Library, is the primary repository for materials that document the history and activities of Amherst College, including minutes from the Trustees and Faculty meetings, administrative publications, and varying levels of documentation of individual departments and student groups.
• Beyond the history of the college, the Archives holds a wealth of collections to support wider research interests and introduce students to primary sources, including major holdings of the manuscripts of Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and Richard Wilbur; the largest collection of Native American and Indigenous-authored books and periodicals in the country; and extensive holdings of rare books and book arts ranging from the 15th century to the present.
• You can search for Native American Literature, rare books, artists books, comics, and more via our catalog in Discover (limit to Amherst College Archives & Special Collections under Library Location). You can search for archives, manuscripts, and other unique materials via Archives Space.
• Amherst College Digital Collections provides access to thousands of digitized materials from Archives & Special Collections, including student newspapers and literary publications, Olios, and historical manuscripts.