Caution: Midterms and Project Deadlines Ahead

Look to the Library to have the expert help and the best tools to help insure student success

Librarians are information experts.

They know where to look for the facts students need to document and support their papers and speeches. They can recommend and demonstrate the best reference materials. Helping students identify, retrieve, evaluate, and synthesize information is their mission and their passion, and this help is available whenever the library is open, day or night.

The Library has tricks that Google can’t match.

Each year the library invests thousands of dollars in subscriptions to databases that deliver the best, most reliable information to the desktop, whether that’s in the library, or at the student’s home or wireless laptop. There are databases for health and medical information, literary criticism and explication, "hot topics" for argumentation and debate, major news articles, and a broad range of magazines and journals on academic subjects.

Class orientations give everyone an edge.

Librarians are happy to address the particular research and information needs of a class group during their class meeting time, to learn about an assignment from the instructor and share with the class some strategies and sources that are tailored to their immediate needs. There’s an online form that enables faculty to quickly and easily request a library orientation.

Librarians never sleep.

Even when the library’s closed, it’s open! With its "Ask Now" online reference service students can get immediate answers to their questions from a librarian whenever they need them 24/7. Librarians in other U.S. and international time zones participate in this program to give library users service that never stops.


For more information contact: Kim Barclay, Library Department Head

Library Update #62

Textbooks and the Library: What Can Students Expect?

Textbook Costs Can Be Overwhelming

Tuition has risen over the years, but it's not the costs of enrollment, but the cost of textbooks that's a bigger and more serious challenge for LBCC students. After admission to their classes students go shopping for their books, and required texts can easily cost them $300, $500, or more for a semester. For some, this sticker shock can be a “deal breaker,” the end of their college aspirations.


The Library Wants to Help

The library can’t afford to buy copies of every textbook assigned each semester at LBCC, and keeping pace with the new text adoptions and changing editions of existing textbooks isn’t practical. The library’s book collection is intended to supplement and enhance the information contained in texts and taught in class.

What the library can do, though, is provide house and manage reserve copies of textbooks that instructors have supplied. Students can borrow these books on short-term loan (usually 2 hours) to permit access to as many as possible. They can study and make photocopies from them in the library, but texts are for in-library use only and students need their current college ID to use them.

Calling all LBCC Faculty!

The library’s reserve service depends upon faculty to supply copies of their textbooks and to make them available for reserve checkout. Often this is a student’s only avenue for completing the reading assignments for his/her course. Faculty owned reserve textbooks can be put on reserve by completing a form found at http://lib.lbcc.edu/forms/reserveform.cfm

For further information contact: Nenita Buenaventura at nbuenaventura@lbcc.edu.

Library Update #56

Information Literacy: Today, Student Success Depends on It!

Today’s society is driven by technology and information, challenging our students to become information literate, skilled at identifying, retrieving, evaluating, and synthesizing recorded knowledge in multiple formats and from many sources.

LBBC’s library and its library faculty are dedicated to equipping the campus community with these kinds of skills through

• carefully selected print and virtual information resources
• orientations geared to the needs of particular courses and assignments
• a curriculum of courses designed to nurture and develop information competence.

Library Department Head Kim Barclay would like to tell you more:

She, and other LBCC Library faculty, would welcome the opportunity to talk about these initiatives and respond to questions at meetings of the academic departments. And librarians always are available to present orientations and in-depth seminars for class groups; these sessions are most effective when they are done at “point of need,” when they are related directly to an assignment that the class has been given.

An online form for scheduling an orientation is available at: http://lib.lbcc.edu/services/facserv.html#forms. The library’s course curriculum can be found at: http://lib.lbcc.edu/classes/classes.html

For more information contact: Kim Barclay kbarclay@lbcc.edu.

Library Update #55

Pre- and Post- Testing to Assess Library Orientations

What do you know? What did you learn?

Library Department Head, Kim Barclay has announced the introduction of pre- and post-testing for all student orientations conducted by LBCC librarians. Students who come with their instructor for a presentation on library print and electronic information resources and how to use them effectively will be given a short (under 5 minute) test on one aspect of library research, such as the online catalog. The orientation will conclude with a second short test on the same topic to help assess whether students have understood and are able to apply the information presented.

“We want to assure ourselves that our orientations are having the desired impact on student success,” said Barclay; “test results will be a useful indicator, guiding the content and direction of future presentations as well as providing data that can be helpful with future accreditation and program review.”

Faculty perspectives will be sought too

Later this year, LBCC faculty who accompany their classes to an orientation also may be asked to provide feedback to the library about the extent to which the presentation met their needs and expectations. “It’s important to us that the library’s customers have the opportunity to tell us where we have been successful and where the content of the presentation needs to change and improve” Department Head Barclay explained.


For more information contact: Kim Barclay kbarclay@lbcc.edu

Library Update #48