External Review Team Members:
Camila A. Alire, Colorado State University--Fort Collins
Library
Mohammed Mekkawi, Howard University Library
Maureen Pastine, Temple University Library
Campus Visit: March 25-26, 1999
| Introduction | 3 |
| Goal I. | Balancing | 5 |
| Goal II. | Partnering | 8 |
| Goal III. | Positioning | 12 |
Report Prepared by the
Library External Review Working Group:
P. Barnett, Chief, Science Division
F. Futch, Copy Cataloger
P. Gillespie, Chief Librarian
R. Gregory, Serials Check-In
L. Hoshovskyj, Library Office Administrator
B. Jenkins, Reference Librarian
L. Mendelsohn, Chief, Public Services
J. Smith, Circulation Supervisor
C. Stewart, Chief, Technical Services
R. Uttich, Chief, Access Services
Reviewed by the Library Executive Committee, January 1999
Introduction
The Library in Context
City
College and its Library share a frequently glorious distant past extending
back to the 1840s, but a more recent past of financial hard times. This
past year the College was re-accredited, but given several immediate tasks
to accomplish. Most prominently the College needs an updated Mission Statement,
and is in the process of vetting various drafts. The gist of the debate
centers around how to be both 1) an excellent and comprehensive undergraduate
college with many Master's programs, and 2) a renowned de facto
Carnegie Research Level II "University," supporting much doctoral and post-doctoral
research with grant funding on the order of $30 million per year. The financial
support for both of these ambitious goals has been increasingly astringent,
especially so in the Library.
Looking beyond the immediate
campus, the Library is also part of several surrounding geographical and
cultural environments. Our immediate neighborhood is Harlem/Upper Manhattan,
with its close ties to African-American, Caribbean, and Hispanic communities.
The College is in the process of trying to establish better ties to these
surrounding groups.
Institutionally the College is part of the City University of New York
(CUNY) system. Within this system the College, founded in 1847, is the
oldest of ten senior colleges, seven community colleges and a graduate
center, all of which compete for students, funding and prestige. The University
is currently administered by an Acting Chancellor with a very activist
and interventionist Board of Trustees, keen on raising admissions and graduation
standards, experimenting with distance learning, and supporting centralization
efforts. With input from the college libraries, the CUNY Office of Library
Services negotiates and funds integrated library systems, and consortial
agreements for services such as binding, OCLC access, and electronic information
resources. In 1995, the Board mandated and started to fund a centralized
technical services unit, suggesting that staff time thus saved at the local
campus libraries could be re-directed to library automation and public
services needs, a supposition realized only on a minimal scale.
Taking the broadest perspective,
the Library, as part of a public institution of higher education, is subject
to the political give-and-take at both the City and State levels. While
City College and the other senior colleges receive their funding entirely
from the State, CUNY Trustees are appointed by the Governor (10) and the
Mayor (5). Currently the Mayor has asked for a review of the entire structure
of the University by appointing a Committee on Public Higher Education,
chaired by Benno Schmidt, President of the Edison Project, a for-profit
company specializing in privatizing K-12 education. This review relates
to a perception, held by the Mayor and some Trustees, of poor performance
by our students/graduates. The committee's report, already overdue, is
expected to suggest significant changes.
In a parallel way at the
State level, the Board of our sister system, the State University of New
York, has also taken a more activist role, most recently recommending establishment
of a university-wide mandatory core curriculum. One of the required courses
is designated "Information Management," indicating a possible appreciation
of the importance of information literacy skills for a quality undergraduate
education. This newly formulated requirement could represent an opportunity
for expanding the appreciation of and funding for libraries at public colleges
generally.
The Library and the College
are also much affected by national and international trends. Federal funding
supports work-study aid, student financial aid, and many of the College's
sci-tech grants. International trends such as immigration directly impact
our student body, and globalization of the economy influences their post-graduate
job placement.
Thus, we find the Library
trying to support the College's excellence goals for both undergraduate
and graduate education for a largely non-traditional student body. The
Library has a particularly challenging time establishing the balance between
support for teaching and support for research, both in terms of resources
obtained and programs supported. Our perennial question is how to leverage
our few resources across this broad spectrum of higher education needs.
We have recently enhanced our automation and technology support, but now
we are back to such fundamental issues as finding the money to bring in
the basic information tools either in print or electronic format. In the
area of Education, for instance, we do not have the fiscal resources to
support the minimum number of periodicals required for a good undergraduate
collection, although the College has both a Bachelor's and a Master's program.
We discuss these balancing issues in our first goal.
How do we attain excellence
in our Library services to meet the growing demand for quality in higher
education, and especially quality instruction in information literacy skills?
Funding for the Library has not been strong for more than a decade, and
prospects for increased tax-levy support are few. In order to offer the
level of service we feel our campus community deserves, we must look for
funding elsewhere, and would like to start to identify new sources. We
feel our most likely opportunities lie in the area of partnering, which
we explore in our next section.
We serve a diverse user
population of students, faculty, staff, alumni and visitors. Along many
measures of diversity we score high: academic discipline, academic level,
foreign born, first generation collegians, native language, religion, income,
ethnicity, and career goals. Within this variety of backgrounds and perspectives,
how can the Library improve its performance and its image? Are there ways
we could customize our services to meet the special and particular needs
of our clientele? A promising trend that might capture much of this energy
is the growth within librarianship toward awareness and promotion of "information
literacy." Perhaps this is a concept that can unify many of our efforts
and needs, and focus our view of quality service with appropriate recognition
as a key player in any vision of quality higher education. And is there
a way we might extend the concept of information literacy to include inter-personal
and cross-cultural literacy as a way to capitalize on our unique situation?
Our last section, "positioning," tries to identify and leverage the strengths
within our communities and match them to the strengths within the library
staff and its professional expertise.
Goal I. Balancing
How can the Library balance the teaching and research missions it supports and manage the inherent conflict between them?
The Middle States Report and the Library's Self Study
In May
of 1998 the Middle States Accreditation Team visited the City College Campus.
The report that was submitted pursuant to their visit expressed concern
that City College did not have "... a clear, approved, widely circulated
and understood mission statement...." The Middle States Team also included
in their report a list of needed improvements in the Library. It is within
the context of these two parts of the Middle States Report that we have
placed the dilemma faced by the Library of meeting the needs of undergraduate
and graduate education and of advanced research.
The Middle States Team expressed
the following concerns with respect to the Library:
1. [That] funding is inadequate
for undergraduate programs, masters programs and the on campus doctoral
programs. Faculty research needs are also under funded. The American Library
Association [ACRL] strongly recommends that [for institutions supporting
undergraduate and masters work] at least 6% of the E&G [institutional
expenditure for educational and general purposes] budget be allocated to
the Library. [Currently the Library is actually funded at approximately
2% of E&G.]
The self-study report prepared by the Library for the Middle States Team further elaborates the crisis that the department is experiencing with regard to its ability to meet the demands of quality Library services for undergraduate and graduate education and for advanced research. A review of the collection development trends in serials at CCNY over the past ten years shows the severe cancellation of journal titles, some 3000 titles. This has resulted in a serials expenditure of only $700,000 rather than the approximately $2,000,000 that the Library estimates is needed to support the research and curricular needs of the faculty and students. A comparison with SUNY Binghamton (see attachment), a campus with total budget and enrollment comparable to CCNY's, shows that Binghamton funds its library with a materials budget almost 3 times that of the City College Library. This SUNY campus spends nearly 3 times as much as City on serials and nearly 4 times as much as City on monographs. Clearly, the Library at City cannot be considered to be financially supported at a level anywhere near what would be considered adequate for a research level institution. The alarming deterioration of the Library, its services, materials, and professional and support staffing, have crippled its ability to provide for the information needs of the College's advanced researchers and its support of undergraduate education. The historic mission of the College to provide access and excellence in higher education for the people of New York is threatened by this neglect.
The Boyer Commission Report and the City College Vision Statement
In response
to the Middle States Team's expression of concern over the lack of a clear,
approved, and widely circulated mission statement, the President has drafted,
and is now circulating for comment to the College community, a vision statement
entitled "City College for the Twenty-First Century." This draft vision
statement draws heavily on the analyses and recommendations of the recent
Carnegie Foundation's Boyer Commission report: "Reinventing Undergraduate
Education: A Blueprint for America's Research Universities." The draft
seeks to establish the fact that City College is de facto a Research Level
II institution, to build upon this fact, and to re-establish the vitality
of the College as a "small comprehensive university within a university
system." Principles articulated in this draft vision statement are sound
and noble. These include:
Additionally, the draft articulates
the roles of administrators, faculty, and students in the development of
action in support of the vision. Administrative leadership in securing
and delivering the resources necessary for the implementation of plans
of action includes:
The faculty are charged with
incorporating higher level learning skills and communications development
into the curriculum. They are challenged to work with colleagues to insure
the overall integration of course work and curriculum development. They
are further required to provide opportunities for students to undertake
special projects, engage in teamwork, have external experiences and otherwise
extend their education beyond standard lecture and laboratory formats.
The Library must be a primary
resource of the research institution committed to a broad and general education.
The Library should marshal informational resources on behalf of advanced
research and guide the undergraduate from basic informational needs through
advanced information resources in a research level learning environment.
Unfortunately, however, the draft vision statement barely mentions the
Library in this endeavor. The statement's bare mention of the Library lacks
any of the enthusiasm that it otherwise seeks to impart to the College
community. It lacks any appreciation that a research level institution
must incorporate the resources of the Library and the professional activities
of its Library faculty into the very substance of the vision of research
based learning. The sole mention of the Library in the vision statement
reads: "Academic support services such as the library, resource centers,
computational, computer applications and writing workshops will be provided
for all undergraduate students." This truncated vision of the role of the
Library may come from the heavy reliance of the vision statement on the
Boyer Commission Report. The only mention of library resources in the Boyer
Commission Report is in the section on the Academic Bill of Rights where
the report states that "Access to first-class facilities in which to pursue
research - laboratories, libraries, studios, computer systems, and concert
halls" is a right of the student [and we would add of faculty and researchers].
It goes on to state that "the research university must facilitate inquiry
in such contexts as the library, the laboratory, the computer, and the
studio."
The fact that Library resources
and services have deteriorated for many years and that they continue to
deteriorate as outlined in the Library's self-study and as noted as a special
area of concern by the Middle States Team, indicates that the College is
missing a fundamental opportunity to implement an essential component of
a research level learning environment at a Research Level II institution.
Still, despite recent years
of deterioration, the potential exists for the City College Library, through
a commitment by the College, to become a central and indispensable partner
in sustaining a research level environment. By meeting the informational
needs of advanced research, and guiding the students through these informational
resources to meet their educational needs, the Library can advance the
vitality of the College. The potential for the Library to broker a wonderfully
rich educational and research community of undergraduates, graduate students,
faculty and researchers is enormous.
The Library might engage in cooperative efforts to enhance the work
of research centers such as the Center for Analysis of Structures and Interfaces
(CASI) [http://www.sci.ccny.cuny.edu/~casi/] and the Center for Biomedical
Engineering (CBE) [http://www-me.engr.ccny.cuny.edu/CBE/], the Benjamin
Levich Institute for Physicochemical Hydrodynamics [http://lisgi1.engr.ccny.cuny.edu/],
the CUNY Institute for Transportation Studies, the CUNY Institute for Ultrafast
Spectroscopy and Lasers (IUSL), the CUNY Institute for Municipal Waste
Research/Center for Water Resources and Environmental Research, the new
Structural Biology/MRI Research Center, the CUNY Institute for Research
on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean (IRADAC) [http://iradac.admin.ccny.cuny.edu/],
the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute [http://www.ccny.cuny.edu/dominican/home.html]
and others.
Where do we go from here?
Our
dilemma of providing for both undergraduate education and graduate and
advanced research needs on a less-than-adequate budget is a daunting challenge.
We have repeatedly brought this to the attention of the College administration,
and would welcome additional suggestions on how to state our case more
compellingly.
In light of the self-study
and the Middle States Report, and with an eye to the still emerging vision
statement and its basis in the Boyer Commission Report, the review team
may wish to recommend that the Library undertake the following studies
or others, perhaps with outside help from consultants:
How can the Library expand its friend-raising, fundraising, publicity, public relations and development activities among corporate, community, alumni and faculty groups?
Definitions
Community: Before the Library can expand its partnering relationships
both in variety and depth, we need to define our "community." We find that
our "community" is multi-faceted geographically and politically.
Geographically, we can define our community the same way our campus
office of Government and External Relations does: Manhattan from 96th
Street to 200th Street. Or, we can define it as the boundaries of the Upper
Manhattan Empowerment Zone. The zone was designated in December 1994 and
includes Harlem, Washington Heights and Inwood, or roughly 110th Street
to 220th Street. Over the years many names have been used to designate
the immediate vicinity around City College.
Politically,
our "community" comprises the 15th Congressional District [and the Library
has been a Federal depository library serving the needs of the 15th CD
for 114 years], the 29th State Senate District, the 70th State Assembly
District, the 7th City Council District and Community Boards 9 through
12.
Alumni: The College currently has a base of at
least 100,000 living graduates. No entity on campus contacts all members
of this community on a regular basis, although all are encouraged to join
the Alumni Association. The Alumni Association boasts thirteen special
interest affiliate groups: Alumni Varsity, Architecture, Art, Asian, Black,
Business/Economics, Chemistry, Communications, CWE, Education, Engineering,
Latino and Nursing.
The association also has ten geographical chapters including
two in California, three in Florida, and others far afield with the closest
being the Washington, D.C. chapter. There are ten committees of the Association,
including a "college affairs" committee, but it is unknown how active this
committee is.
Faculty: The number of faculty on campus continues to decline in the face of budgetary issues such as retrenchments, closing of programs in the wake of changing enrollment patterns, and early retirement incentives. Numbers of full-time faculty have declined by about 50% in the last ten years to approximately 500, while the current adjunct faculty to full-timer ratio is 2:1. Outreach to faculty has become increasingly difficult but increasingly more necessary.
The Friends of the Library: Created in 1984, the Friends of the Library has remained a small organization since its inception. Members come and go, but the net membership is constant in the low 30s. The group renewed its sponsorship of activities in 1997, but the sponsorship is primarily in name. The organizational work and planning is done through the Chief Librarian's office and sponsorship partnerships have been established with the Rifkind Center for the Humanities and the School of Engineering Advisory Board so far.
Corporate Environment: As a College situated in
the "business capital of the world" it is perhaps odd to feel the need
to define the corporate climate, but we have realized that Wall Street
seldom looks uptown. The designation "Harlem" has evoked negative connotations
among some business enterprises. For instance, there are very few retail
banking facilities in the immediate vicinity of the College.
The corporate entities the Library would like to draw
upon immediately fall into three groups:
Campus Relationships
The major campus-wide
fund raising entities at CCNY are the City College Fund and the Development
Office. The Fund is an independently chartered entity, which does not report
to the President of the College. A Vice President of the College directly
reporting to the President heads the Development Office. The Alumni Association,
chartered in 1853, is now a separate non-profit organization and does not
do fundraising. Several divisions of the College such as the School of
Engineering have development personnel, but the Library makes do with whatever
time the Chief Librarian can spare.
The City College Fund and the Library have collaborated
on a few projects since September 1996. The first of these was the inclusion
of a check off for the Library on the donor solicitation return envelope
the Fund mails to alumni. Additionally, the Fund paid for a mailing to
nearly 6000 alumni donors from classes earlier than 1948 advertising Friends
of the Library events in Fall 1997. The Fund also updated our Friends membership
brochure and commissioned a membership premium gift of a handsome book
cover. This promising beginning effort has tapered off since the departure
of the Fund's executive director. The current acting director is reluctant
to undertake other than maintenance efforts.
The Fund administers four short-term (non-income producing)
accounts for the Library and one endowment. The Friends of the Library
account is on the short-term list.
The Development Office has been working on a capital
campaign proposal for more than two years, and the Library was not originally
included in the fundable projects listed in the campaign papers. We petitioned
to be included and were allowed to submit two facilities projects. The
campaign planning has progressed so slowly that one of our projects has
been funded alternatively using a City Council grant. However, we have
not been offered the opportunity to update our list of proposed projects.
A Planned Gifts/Major Giving Development officer has
recently been added to the staff, and we hope that will give capital campaign
planning a nudge.
Both the Fund and Development Office received from the
Chief Librarian a "wish list" of funding opportunities with price tags
for everything from mouse pads to endowed chairs. While the Library has
continued to make some progress obtaining items on the wish list through
its own efforts, nothing has been pursued by the College's fundraising
entities.
The City College Office of Research Administration, our
on-campus contact with the CUNY Research Foundation, exists to administer
grants received. While the office does not currently directly administer
grants specific to the Library, it does administer whatever sums the Library
receives sporadically from grant overhead. The Research Foundation acts
as the 501C3 entity for the campus and provides assistance with grant preparation.
In contrast to external fundraising attempts, the Library
has had much more success developing co-sponsorship relationships with
other campus units. Our most frequent collaborator is the Simon H. Rifkind
Center for the Humanities, which has been our co-sponsor for six literary
events since April 1997, including one with a third sponsor—the Jewish
Studies Program. The Rifkind-Friends partnership is working on two events
for Spring 1999 already and we anticipate that this relationship will continue
to be mutually beneficial.
A budding relationship is one between the School of Engineering
and the Library. So far, interestingly enough, the two collaborative efforts
undertaken are art related: a reception last April to unveil a portrait
of an alum/faculty member donated by an Engineering Advisory Board member
and a planned major unveiling reception next May for art recently purchased
for the engineering building, Steinman Hall.
Library faculty and faculty from other academic departments
continue to work collaboratively to mount exhibits in the Library. Some
recent efforts include partnering with Black Studies, Women's Studies,
English, Architecture and Anthropology. The Library collaborates each year
with the administration on the "City Women in Print" exhibit, and a CUNY
traveling exhibit, "From the Free Academy to CUNY," was co-curated by archivists/librarians
at CCNY, Baruch and Brooklyn.
The recently established Center for Teaching and Learning
makes its home in Cohen Library, drawing more faculty into the Library
and offering additional options for programming and collaboration.
Also housed within Cohen Library, but not under its supervision,
is the general-purpose computer lab. We have worked closely with Academic
Computing to extend the lab's hours to more closely correspond to the Library's
hours in order to improve student access.
Instructional Media, a division of the Library until
August 1996, has moved to other quarters on campus, and has the Library's
media collection on loan to it indefinitely. The Library's media collection
is now split, with all acquisitions since August 1996 housed in the Library.
When our planned Library Image Center becomes reality, the Library will
recall its collection.
The Library has made an initial effort to work with clubs
on campus through the Finley Student Center. We ran a "Food for Fines"
drive in December 1997 and Finley arranged for club members to deliver
the canned goods collected to three local charities.
Community Relationships
Under the aegis
of High School/College Cooperative Library Project grant, the Library has
worked extensively with students from the Frederick Douglass Academy and
A.P. Randolph High School to provide specialized bibliographic instruction
and tutoring for three years. Outside the parameters of that grant, we
have expanded our reach to include biology students from Bronx High School
of Science, middle school students from Mott Hall, and history and philosophy
students from Brandeis High School.
This past
April, CCNY sponsored "NASA Day in New York," which drew 400 area high
school science students to campus. The Chief Librarian was an active member
of the planning committee, soliciting contributions for door prizes, ensuring
school participation, and doing publicity. The Library offered a demonstration
of NASA-related resources on the web during the exhibit portion of the
program.
Current Activities
The Library
is striving to revitalize its Friends group and to increase the membership,
mainly through sponsorship of activities we hope are of interest to a wide
variety of people, from exhibits to wine tastings to book signings and
readings. We also interact with alumni at every opportunity, and the Chief
Librarian has been the guest speaker at a meeting of the Alumni Association
Board.
Fundraising
is limited to the time available to the Chief Librarian, and we have concentrated
on approaching small foundations with specific projects in mind. This has
not been successful as yet, as we have had just a few projects funded.
We have received funding from the NY City Council for an electronic classroom,
and the Archivist received a grant from the Alumni Association, a NY State
Conservation Survey grant, and one from a distinguished alumnus.
Publicity
is an extremely problematic issue for the Library, as well as for the campus
as a whole. There is no College-wide system for announcements—phone announcements
are limited to 100 extensions; at least five different email systems are
in use; the campus mail distribution is sporadic at best and usually extremely
delayed; and many offices do not yet have access to the web to view a common
campus calendar if one existed.
And the Future?
Our long wish
list needs financial attention. Foremost, we wish to be regarded by other
campus constituencies as something more than just another support service
competing for scarce dollars. How do we convince corporations and agencies
that fund specific projects on our campus that the Library resources to
support those projects need to be separately funded under Library management?
Given the slow pace of the College's fund-raising, how do we either help
their effort and/or go more our own way?
The Library
strongly feels that it should have a development officer, preferably a
full time professional. We wish for closer ties with the corporate world,
a working relationship with the New York City Partnership Policy Center
and the Hamilton Heights Homeowners Association, a Library facility for
disabled students, a Library Café as a collaborative endeavor with
a commercial vendor—preferably our campus Barnes & Noble bookstore—and
a Library Gift Shop managed by the Friends.
Goal III. Positioning
How does the Library position itself with respect to its multiple populations and facilitate the universe of discourse that will engage this diverse group in a lifelong process of learning and interacting?
The role of the Library in the City College community rests on the College's mission statement and general description of goals/priorities, as currently presented on the College's Home Page [http://www.ccny.cuny.edu/mission/html]. It reads as follows:
The City College of New York maintains its historic mission of serving the City of New York by providing baccalaureate and graduate education in the liberal arts and sciences and professional disciplines at a level characteristic of the best American colleges and universities, to students of promise who may be of modest means, immigrants, or children of immigrants, and whose families may have little knowledge of higher education. The College encourages its students and faculty to contribute new knowledge and methods in scholarly and professional disciplines and to engage in the solution of important intellectual and social challenges through distinguished teaching, research and service.
The City College is a comprehensive institution of Liberal Arts, Sciences and Professional Programs that provides all undergraduate students with a strong foundation in the liberal arts and sciences. Research and graduate training in the doctoral programs of the City University of New York is integral to the College's mission. The College is noted for its particular strength and uniqueness in Architecture, Engineering, the Sciences (including mathematics and pre-medical studies) and the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education. In addition, each program in the Liberal Arts has developed unique strengths adapted to the needs of our students, our community and the New York area.
City College is committed to serve the City of New York, providing graduates who are well-equipped to enter the workforce, including teachers who are capable of meeting the challenges of the New York school system and contributing to the cultural, economic and intellectual vitality of this great city.
Definition of Positioning
Positioning is the role that the Library assumes in order
to ensure that its services support the instruction and information needs
of the College community. The Library is the repository of those resources
which support the liberal arts, the institutional memory of worldwide cultures
which provide the materials to foster self-development and independent
learning.
The Library, established within two years of the founding
of City College in 1847, serves as the historical center of the College
and serves as its cultural memory. Furthermore, the Library has the responsibility
to help build a sense of community through its exhibits and public programs.
The Library can partner with the communities beyond the campus and find
a balance in its support of research and teaching.
The question is, then, how should the Library promote
itself to its multiple populations in a way that will engage them in the
lifelong process of learning?
What Are Some Of The Issues Involved?
A. Population
Students from all over the world attend The City College,
located in Upper Manhattan. The challenge the Library faces is to support
a core curriculum which addresses the intellectual needs of a multi-cultural
population. Historically, the student body was composed predominantly of
the children of European immigrants. Over time, this portrait has grown
to encompass the children of immigrants primarily from Asia, Africa and
South America. As we approach the new millennium, not only does City College
benefit from the academic research and brilliant teaching of the faculty,
but it now also has the enormous wealth of a student population that represents
three-fourths of the world's nationalities and cultural backgrounds.
One question the Library now faces is whether it has
a role of outreach and community service. If so, how might the Library
facilitate the bridging of individual and group differences? In what ways
do mentoring, programming, collecting of media and printed resources, discussion
groups and/or independent studies all combine to enrich the individual
and encourage interracial and intercultural understanding?
B. Library Programs
To support the information and research needs of our students,
and to help them become effective users of the Library collections and
services, the Library provides a number of venues: reference and referral
services (Information Desk, Interlibrary Loan, document delivery, Metro
cards, etc.); the Library Home Page on the World Wide Web; and Library
Instruction and orientation. Library orientation entails the distribution
of maps and guides and class tours of the Library facilities; Library instruction
includes one-on-one instruction, course-related workshops and instruction
for specific electronic resources or disciplines. All of these efforts
contribute to "information literacy." A Library committee is in the process
of formalizing this curriculum into a credit course for the College.
Since all of our students commute to class, many of them
have multiple, time-consuming responsibilities, e.g. jobs and families,
and varying levels of knowledge and understanding about how libraries are
organized and how to find information. Course assignments often have short
deadlines that pressure students, especially if they do not feel comfortable
using the many resources the Library provides. Faculty teaching large classes
often don't have the time to attend to the information-seeking needs of
their students. These factors mandate that the Library staff be cognizant
of these issues and be prepared to meet these demanding needs.
What strategies should we develop in our instructional
programs and services, access policies, and learning environment to ease
the transition to college work and to allow for individual and cooperative
learning modalities? With limited resources, how can we best serve the
wide variety of student and faculty research needs that the rapidly changing
and growing sources of information in our society require?
C. Outreach and Community Programming
The Library
sponsors lectures, readings and exhibits throughout the year often in conjunction
with other campus entities such as the Rifkind Center for the Humanities.
These programs vary in content: some are related to the history of the
College, special Library collections, or to a particular area of study
and are designed to attract a multiplicity of interest groups, classes,
and research centers.
Given that the Library plays a critical role in the cultural
life of the community, and that librarians are individually active in outreach
activities, what strategies should be used to give additional visibility
to these programs? What options do we have for fostering independent study
courses, team-teaching with faculty, scheduled group study sessions that
are course related, specialized bibliographies, scheduled talks and panel
discussions which include students from various disciplines and cultures?
Where Do We Go In The Future?
Our objectives are twofold:
1. To help students develop information seeking and evaluation skills so that they are comfortable with finding information for their courses and for their future roles as professionals and citizens, perhaps by means of a credit course in information literacy.
2. In addition
to our academic support role, to foster intercultural understanding and
cooperation on campus by providing opportunities for small group discussion
and community building. This could provide a humanizing complement to the
College's predominantly high-tech curricular orientation, in the spirit
of a well-rounded liberal arts experience.