So I'm just going to post a list of some of the wonderful things that are happening at Jones Library. If you have questions, email me or stop by the library--or comment below.
1. WE GOT THE GRANT!
Two years' planning and work, and we are finally implementing our LSTA Lifelong Learning grant. Here's the abstract of the grant proposal:
Grant Category: Project Literacy & Lifelong Learning
Institution/Library: Brevard College
Project Description:
This project will create an experiential Learning Commons that focuses on student success, combining library and learning support services to improve formal student learning. The grant will help the library make the paradigm shift from traditional warehouse and lecture-oriented bibliographic instruction center to a user-centered experiential learning laboratory offering a wide variety of support services.
This project will create an experiential Learning Commons that focuses on student success, combining library and learning support services to improve formal student learning. The grant will help the library make the paradigm shift from traditional warehouse and lecture-oriented bibliographic instruction center to a user-centered experiential learning laboratory offering a wide variety of support services.
We've started buying technology and furnishings to support the project, and we will soon have some construction going on. The timeline is still TBD on that construction, but I promise to blog and write about this as things start to happen. We plan on grand opening the new Experiential Learning Commons at the beginning of fall semester 2017.
2. We have a new roof and painted and lighted cupola.
The library looks much spiffier with the cupola clean and lighted and the books are less damp than they have been. No more buckets in the stacks, either!
3. We're working on our information literacy curriculum
We are almost done with sessions for all of the FYE classes. We have been working on rolling out a full information literacy curriculum that will introduce different information research and evaluation ideas in different levels of classes. So if you are a faculty member and want to get papers with better sources or better citations, or you want to have your students talk about the politics of information with someone other than you, get in touch with Chilly. We can meet live with your class, create handouts and/or online resources, or even have a librarian embedded in your Sakai site. (And if you are a student, you should be happy to know that you will learn different things each time you come into the library with a class.)
4. We have interns for next semester!
We are incredibly excited that some of our soon-to-be graduates at Brevard are seriously considering careers in library science. We love our jobs and we think that library work, in all of its varied flavors, is a terrific career direction, so we are happy to support our students in learning more about what the job might actually entail. And, btw, "loving books" is less a pre-requisite than intellectual curiosity and flexibility. Libraries have changed a lot over the course of my career (yep, I typed catalog cards--on actual cards--in graduate school) and I expect that they will continue to evolve rapidly. Libraries are still community centers and hubs of information and learning. That information comes in very different forms than it used to, but it is still the basis of what we do. Want to know more about jobs in libraries? See the Occupational Outlook Handbook.
5. Light reading: New paperbacks
We've experimented a bit with different ways of providing light reading for the campus community. The Transylvania County Public Library is amazing, but it's handy to be able to grab a book without going downtown. Last year we tried a rental collection, but it didn't get much use for the amount of money we spent on it. Starting this fall, we have paperbacks available for anyone to take. You don't have to check them out (so you don't have to worry about them being overdue), but we ask that you return them when you are done with them and donate your own paperbacks to be added to the collection. We try to have a nice range of genre and literary fiction.
6. We are busy
We are always busy, but our numbers are up in one-on-one appointments for senior projects and other work, and classes are checking out our technology (iPads, especially) on a pretty regular basis. It feels like we are doing important work at Brevard College and that our students are learning so very much.
Have I told you lately how happy I am working here? Thanks, BC.
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