Thursday, May 3, 2012

The Library's Spring Round-Up

The Downtown Campus would like to thank all faculty, staff and administration for the support of the Downtown Library. Many of you have brought in your class(es) for library instruction or asked us to come to your class. We have seen an increase in students at our reference desk with specific assignments where the library resources play a large part. In our LibGuides, we have seen an increase in their usage. We are so glad we can support your classes in so many ways.

If you are looking ahead to the Summer, or even the Fall semesters, please remember to contact the Library early to reserve your spot on our calendar. Also, if you think you would like a LibGuide for your class (or course), or update an existing LibGuide to reflect revisions in your syllabus, let us know. The summer is a great time for us to work on those projects.

This is also a great time for us to remind you of a way for a librarian have a greater presence in your face-to-face and online learning environments. As an embedded librarian, we can be there to answer your students questions regarding research, citations and the like. This is especially helpful in hybrid and online courses, where a library instruction session may not be feasible. As a TA, we can be there to answer questions or to even lead a research discussion. In a face-to-face class, we can come in periodically to help students before and/or after class, as well to spend a few minutes to answer questions or to refresh them on finding resources. This would be especially helpful in courses that are identified as writing intensive. The NW campus has done this with great results. Others institutions have used Embedded Librarians and found the research papers are of a higher quality.

And for those that will be (or are already) using D2L, it appears the Library will have a presence in that platform. (yea!) We will have more information on that, once things are finalized, but it looks like it will be easier to link to our tutorials and other resources.

Finally, it is with great sadness that we must report one of our librarians, Nancy Schuler, is leaving us. Her husband has accepted a position with a college in Florida, so they will be moving over the summer. While we will miss her, we wish her and her family the best as they begin a new chapter in their lives.