Good News for Challenging Times

In his message of August 11 President/Superintendent Oakley described the many programs that have been affected by the state budget catastrophe and the impact that is being felt by the campus community. It’s a sobering, disheartening picture, but despite all the foreboding, the processes and inherent rewards of teaching and learning will continue. We in the library are especially thankful to be able to offer our student, staff and faculty customers some good news for the year ahead.

• We are extremely fortunate that both campuses now are equipped with beautiful, updated and welcoming library buildings; they have the infrastructure, the connectivity, and the range of information resources that can serve everyone’s research needs
• The library is working to maintain service hours in the face of eroding support; students can depend on us for a spacious, comfortable place to study that’s available when they need it
• We welcome new adjunct librarians join our staff this fall bringing with them the enthusiasm, energy, and fresh perspectives of new graduates
• Though support for buying new books always is uncertain, the campus can depend on the library to continue to provide an excellent array of web-based reference tools and to make them available to its customers anytime and anywhere from any web-enabled computer

Transcending all of these positives, though, is the commitment of the library and its faculty, staff, and student employees to service excellence. Whether it’s in the classroom, at the reference desk, at the check-out counter, or behind the scenes where materials are ordered and cataloged, the library’s people make the crucial difference that will sustain us all through tenuous times into recovery.

For more information contact: Dele Ukwu, Library Department Head dukwu@lbcc.edu

Library Update #66

Library Brings JSTOR™ to LBCC

Libraries worldwide are making a transition from print to digital collections of magazines and newspapers. JSTOR has emerged as the most stable and reliable archive of digitized scholarly content. Its many collecting categories contain pdf photographic images of each issue of each journal.

LBCC Library is pleased to introduce JSTOR’s Language and Literature Collection and its Arts & Sciences I Collection to the campus community. They feature a total of 119 journals in 21 subject disciplines:

* Core journals in economics, history, political science, and sociology, as well as in other key fields in the humanities and social sciences
* Titles in ecology, mathematics, and statistics
* A range of core journals in diverse fields of literary criticism selected with the help of the Modern Language Association and including PMLA
* Among the titles included are Political Science Quarterly, College English, American Literature, Journal of Black Studies, American Journal of Sociology, American Journal of Mathematics, and many others

To read more about the JSTOR archive visit www.JSTOR.org; to see the specific titles and years included in each collection connect to http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/archives/collections.jsp

Get started now with your own JSTOR searching through the library’s database page http://lib.lbcc.edu/databases.html ; click on "J," then "JSTOR Language and Literature Collection"

For more information contact: Nenita Buenaventura, Access Services and Electronic Resources Librarian.

Library Update #65

Library Services that Enhance Teaching and Learning

Each year we welcome new colleagues to LBCC, and our student community is ever-changing. So, for those who were not here when we announced them, and for those who may not remember, the library would like to call your attention to some previous Library Updates that are still as relevant today as they were when they first appeared:

“Information Literacy: Today Student Success Depends Upon It”

“LBCC Faculty and Staff, Borrow Books and Media at CSULB Library!”

”Student-Tested, Professor-Approved Web Resources that Work”

”Textbooks and the Library. What Can Students Expect?”

A full listing of previous Library Updates can be found at http://lib.lbcc.edu/updates/updates.html

For more information contact: Dele Ukwu, Library Department Head dukwu@lbcc.edu

Library Update #64

Library Services that Enhance Teaching and Learning

Good News Bears Repeating

Each year we welcome new colleagues to LBCC, and our student community is ever-changing. So, for those who were not here when we announced them, and for those who may not remember, the library would like to call your attention to some previous Library Updates that are still as relevant today as they were when they first appeared:

"Information Literacy: Today Student Success Depends Upon It" http://lbcclib.blogspot.com/2008/08/information-literacy-today-student.html


"LBCC Faculty and Staff, Borrow Books and Media at CSULB Library!" http://lbcclib.blogspot.com/2008/04/lbcc-faculty-and-staff-borrow-books-and.html


"Student-Tested, Professor-Approved Web Resources that Work"
http://lbcclib.blogspot.com/2008/02/student-tested-professor-approved-web.html


"Textbooks and the Library. What Can Students Expect?" http://lbcclib.blogspot.com/2008/09/textbooks-and-library-what-can-students.html

A full listing of previous Library Updates can be found at http://lib.lbcc.edu/updates/updates.html

For more information contact: Dele Ukwu, Interim Library Department Head

Library Update #64

Library Announces Enhancements to Science Online from Facts on File™

New content and features have been added to the library’s Science Online database :

• Scope of coverage expanded to include new “core” subject areas
+ Marine science
+ Chemistry
+ Physics

• Hundreds of new color illustrations added, plus 60 new photographs

• Over 440 new essays include topics such as synthetic foods, chemistry of water pollution, ocean currents, household energy use

• An Advanced Search page offers many options for easily limiting search results

Science Online is one of a library of curriculum-oriented databases from Facts on File™ that are accessible free to LBCC students and faculty because of a subscription paid by the library; read about them all out at http://www.fofweb.com/subscription/, then return to http://lib.lbcc.edu/databases.html# to select one and connect to it.

For more information contact: Nenita Buenaventura, Access Services & Electronic Resources Librarian nbuenaventura@lbcc.edu

Library Update #63

Library Announces Enhancements to Science Online from Facts on File™

New content and features have been added to the library’s Science Online database http://lib.lbcc.edu/databases.html#s :

* Scope of coverage expanded to include new “core” subject areas
o Marine science
o Chemistry
o Physics
* Hundreds of new color illustrations added, plus 60 new photographs
* Over 440 new essays include topics such as synthetic foods, chemistry of water pollution, ocean currents, household energy use
* An Advanced Search page offers many options for easily limiting search results

Science Online is one of a library of curriculum-oriented databases from Facts on File™ that are accessible free to LBCC students and faculty because of a subscription paid by the library; read about them all out at http://www.fofweb.com/subscription/ , then return to http://lib.lbcc.edu/databases.html to select one and connect to it.

For more information contact: Nenita Buenaventura, Access Services & Electronic Resources Librarian

Library Update #63

Caution: Midterms and Project Deadlines Ahead

Look to the Library to have the expert help and the best tools to help ensure 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 kbarclay@lbcc.edu

Library Update #62