Do you ever wonder where your students are?

Apparently a bunch of them are in the library.  Staff tallied 4,935 inquiries at the reference desk in the first 2 weeks of Spring semester.  Most students were looking for a copy of their textbook, which can involve a visit to the College Store web site as well as to e-services to find author, title, and course number.  Other students entered permission numbers, reset passwords, sought campus directions, and many had homework questions in hand.  At the circulation desk, students borrowed textbooks 7,046 times, the photocopiers broke down (and were fixed) oh, about 80 times, and 7 umbrellas appeared in lost and found.

Opening day frenzy has died down a bit, and library orientations have started.  Do you know about PILOT, the new online tutorial that helps students find and evaluate information sources?  Have you booked a time to bring your class to the library for a customized instruction session?  Or assigned students to take a Drop in Orientation on their own time?

Learning Resource Center
Hours for Spring 2010:
Monday – Thursday 7:30 a.m to 8:00 p.m.
Friday 7:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Saturday 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

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Library PILOTs online tutorial

PILOT – Path to Information Literacy Online Tutorial – is a new online library tutorial that helps students learn the information literacy skills critical to their success, including:

• Choosing research topics
• Identifying information sources
• Searching LOIS (Library catalog)
• Using periodical databases to find articles
• Searching the Web
• Citation and plagiarism

PILOT consists of six self-contained modules.  Instructors can direct their students to one or more of the modules at any time during the semester.

Each PILOT module comes with a self-grading quiz at the end for students to gauge their progress.  When students choose an answer to a question, they will see feedback explaining why their choice is correct or incorrect.

Students can email their quiz results to their instructors, allowing instructors to easily monitor their students’ progress in the tutorial.

Find more detail on the PILOT introduction page or contact Sue Chen with your questions.

It’s Raining Textbooks

It’s January 2010 in Sacramento and the rain is relentless.  At SCC the parking lot is jammed, hallways are crammed, and the quad is a jar of mud jelly.  Up in the library the staff is spinning, the copiers are  smoking, queues of sleepy students curl among the pillars, and every table is host to a damp mob.  Reserve textbooks hurtle from shelf to student to bin, hundreds of hits per hour.  Here and there in a rare quiet corner, Yolanda and Ely and Portia are weaving her first speech presentation, his reading project, her math homework.  Free from the December doghouse, day four of the new semester sits up and wags its tail.

Welcome back!

Watch and share our library videos on YouTube

Written instructions are great, but sometimes it’s better to see how something is done. That’s why the library’s making videos demonstrating how to use the library and accomplish concrete research tasks. We’re kicking off the semester with an always-popular topic: how to find your textbooks in the library, whether you know which book you’re looking for or you don’t:

PLEASE share these videos with your students! Visit our YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/saccitylibrary.

Our End-of-the-Year Numbers

It’s always comforting ( at least to me) to look at end-of-the-year reports and see that our services and resources have been of use to the campus community.  If you are also satisfied by numbers, here are a few to enjoy:

• Electronic Reserves:  This semester we had 207 items on electronic reserve.  They were accessed a total of 7,359 times!
• E-books: 1179 of our e-books were accessed at least once from July ‘08 to June ‘09.
• Databases: During that same period, our main, multi-subject database fielded 625,130 searches and 77,162 full-text articles were retrieved.

I could go on (and on!) but this is enough satisfaction for one post.

Happy holidays!

Have Yourself a Reader’s Holiday

Help us get the word out.  Tell your returning students they can borrow two library books over the winter break, beginning Friday, Dec. 11.  The due date for these books is Jan. 20, 2010.

Take a few books home yourself:

• The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
• Outliers : the story of success
• Her Fearful Symmetry : a novel
• Where Men Win Glory
• and many more!

Give A Reader’s Favorite Gift

Stuck for what to buy?  You can always give a book…

Borders and Barnes & Nobel are obvious places to browse – in person or online.  Amazon provides category browsing, as well as links to award books, customer favorites, and a lot (too much) more.  Lots of people love Powell’s.

But have you tried these?

BookPrizeInfo collects book prize winners (for 32 literary prizes) by category.   Take your pick of prizewinners in Crime, Fiction, Non-Fiction, or Science Fiction.

National Public Radio recommends titles to share, staff picks, and more in stories and reviews – from graphic novels to stories of love and the universe.  You’ll probably enjoy just reading the reviews.

And of course the American Library Association has a list (of lists) of recommended reading.  Put your glasses on; this one is thorough.  Check out the 2009 Notable Book Selections.

Locally, the Avid Reader has filled Tower Books’ niche on Broadway.  Staff will search, recommend, order, and wrap books for you.

If  you just need a couple of books for yourself to read over the holidays, get yourself into the SCC LIBRARY before we close at 8:00 p.m. Dec. 17!

Or visit the Sac Public Library branch near you.

How Green Is Your Library?

We decided to peel back the LRC’s stylish green countertops, service desks, bookcases, and carpets and investigate the true color of everyday actions in your library building.  LRC staff accrued eco-credit for:

• using Google Documents to collaborate and conserve printouts
• using Google Sites to formulate unit plan and meeting agendas
• making tiny receipts for media fines, DE leases, and headphones instead of full page printouts, and forgoing fax cover sheets
• switching to online media equipment reservations
• using SurveyMonkey for online faculty, student, and staff surveys
• using recycled paper, printing on used paper, and printing 2 sided
• chopping up printouts for heaps of scrap paper used each day
• posting handouts online and collecting homework in D2L’s dropbox
• recycling over 1500 outdated books to Better World Books
• collecting and recycling spent batteries from patrons and staff
• turning off monitors on lunch breaks
• walking or biking to work
• taking advantage of structural efficiencies – natural light and motion detecting light fixtures
• helping students find information on the giant Pacific garbage patch and other environmental topics
• setting up displays on carbon footprint and recycling

But what about all that “paper” on the third floor?

Library Databases Go Mobile

If you use a mobile device–a Blackberry, iPhone, or other gadget–you may have found that mobile versions of websites can make a huge difference in getting the information you need. Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Facebook, Wikipedia, and other highly-trafficked sites redirect mobile users to sites optimized for small screens and lightweight browsers.

We’re just starting to see this trend in our subscription databases: Ebsco, which provides Academic Search Premier, CINAHL, and several other databases, now has its own mobile interface, and the Naxos Music Library has launched an iPhone app.

Help – Library Research Databases In Jeopardy!

Faculty, do your students use online research databases such as Ebsco’s Academic Search Premier or CQ Researcher to complete your assignments?  Are you aware that the state has eliminated funding for these databases?

In the Los Rios District, we are very fortunate that the District Office has supplied funding for this year to guarantee that Los Rios students will have access to databases through Spring 2011, but there are no assurances about the future.  Community college students throughout the state could lose access to many thousands of up-to-date, full-text, high quality periodical articles that instruct, inform, and help them fulfill course requirements.  Distance education students will be especially hard hit.

In response to this crisis, the CCC Council of Chief Librarians has presented to the Board of Governors a “Resolution Requesting Action by the Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges to Support Continued Funding for Online Library Information Resources and Services Needed by Students and Faculty.” The resolution asks the BOG to direct the Chancellor’s Office to actively seek other sources of funding for online information resources and services.

If you value students’ access to the databases, you can help. Send an email voicing your concerns and your support for the resolution to:

Mr. Lance T. Izumi, President, Board of Governors CCC ngriffin@cccco.edu
Chancellor Jack Scott, California Community Colleges fjames@cccco.edu
Dr. Morgan Lynn, Executive Vice Chancellor, CCC mlynn@cccco.edu
Ms. Jane Patton, President, Academic Senate, CCC jane_patton@wvm.edu