Library Users Group


Members

Linda Evans, MCC
Chair

Bob Davidson, DIST
Group Support

Debbie Anderson, SMCC
Gwen Argersinger, MCC
Cheryl Badone, PC
Georgia Dillard, PC
Sandy Elias, MCC
Lou Farmakis, PVCC
Florence Landon, MCC
Sherry Loch, PVCC
Pat Lokey, SCC
Donna Rebadow, PVCC
Winifred Shea, PC
Philip Tompkins, EMCC

Introduction

The Library Users Group of Ocotillo:

opens new avenues of communication among librarians and other teaching faculty to create effective and integrated learning environments;
encourages collaborative educational experiences that empower students for lifelong learning and enhance their information literacy;
develops programs, guides, and other information sources that promote fuller understanding of issues of information access among MCCCD students, faculty, and staff.

Year in Review

The Ocotillo Library Users Group redoubled its commitment to promoting communication and collaboration among students, faculty, and staff across the District. The reordering of components of our mission statement - placing communication first in the list of purposes we hope to serve - demonstrates a change in emphasis for this committee. We recognize that there are a great deal of innovative applications of technology currently in use across the District. Identifying and encouraging innovation in information access has become an integral goal of the Ocotillo Library Users Group. A major challenge in promoting information technology within colleges and centers across the District is presented by the disparity of technological resources available to the different colleges and centers. This continues to be a central concern of this committee, and a number of our recommendations are made with this consideration in mind.

Major Accomplishments

Originally charged with discussing the elements of a core collection of a community college library and looking at ways of maximizing limited budgetary resources, the Ocotillo Library users Group soon discovered that LAREDO has already developed a set of MCCCD Resource Sharing Guidelines. Thus, we felt free to change our direction and agenda for the year. Our committee recommendations reflect this change of purpose.
In November, the committee participated in the beta testing of American Memory, a multimedia, hypertext project of the Library of Congress. The aim of American Memory is to preserve selected collections and make them more accessible to scholars in remote locations. Jeremy Rowe, head of Media Services at ASU's Hayden Library, demonstrated the project for us. Following this, we provided written and oral feedback to Mr. Rowe. This project is interesting because it suggests ways in which collaboration and resource sharing can occur between MCCCD and ASU.
This committee devoted considerable time and thought to the relationship between computer literacy and information literacy. MCCCD has recognized the need for students to be computer literate; evidence of this is the one-hour computer usage requirement for the A.A., A.G.S., and A.A.S. degrees. There is now a sense that the need for a computer literacy requirement is obsolete in that students are coming to MCCCD with some background in computer usage. However the Ocotillo Library Users Group found that students are facing an increasing need for information literacy skills. How best to teach students to access and apply information is one of the questions we wish to address on an ongoing basis.

Committee Recommendations

The Ocotillo Library Users Groups is making the following recommendations after considering the pressing issues concerning student and faculty informational needs, varying levels of technology available to MCCCD colleges and centers, and limited budgetary resources:

Improving communication among library faculty and other teaching faculty. This committee recommends the development of open houses, improved marketing of information technology, articles in student and/or college bulletins and newsletters, and listservs across the District.
Enhancing information access skills among faculty. Core access to information and instructional resources is an integral part of the institutional commitment of MCCCD. Access to these resources carries with it the notion that some of these resources will be owned by a particular college, others by sister colleges within MCCCD, and many others will be owned by other educational organizations locally, regionally, and nationally.
Access to information and instructional resources is based for the most part on our ability to communicate electronically through the MCCCD and Arizona State University online catalogs, and to other colleges and universities for interlibrary loan of books through the OCLC system.
A newer and increasingly popular way of accessing hundreds of electronic resources across the nation and around the world is the INTERNET. We strongly recommend that students, instructors, library information, media and computer professionals and staff be introduced to the INTERNET through a training program coordinated between the District office and the colleges/centers.
"The Whole INTERNET Guide and Catalog" lists 50 pages of resources including bread-and-butter databases in aeronautics and astronautics, anthropology, astronomy, biology, chemistry, computer science, education, engineering, the environment, geography, geology and geophysics, national, state and local government documents, health, history, the humanities, libraries, literature, mathematics, medicine, music, network information, network news, nutrition, physics, popular culture, reference books, religion, resource directories, science, meteorology and climatology.
We can connect to these informational and instructional resources thanks to the technological infrastructure which MCCCD has invested in during the past thirteen years. Now is the time to accept this as an institutional priority and imperative of the information age.
Enhancing information skills among students. At several meetings, this committee looked at inventories of information access skills for students from other institutions of higher education. It would be advantageous for MCCCD to develop such an inventory and use it to design and plan adequate training in information technology usage.
Encouraging collaboration among faculty. This committee wishes to pursue a closer working relationship with the Ocotillo "Support for Technology" committee and other groups that identify and showcase technological innovations designed or implemented by MCCCD faculty.

Future Concerns

Promoting information literacy among students. Librarians across the nation can attest to the fact that students are poorly prepared to cope with the information realities of today's society. We in MCCCD are fortunate, however, to be able to offer a variety of informational formats that accommodate different learning styles This resource-based learning offers information resources of the "real world" and demonstrates that learning is active and integrated, not passive and fragmented.

Helping students become more independent and self- directed learners must be a collaborative venture among library faculty and classroom faculty. First, the library can provide information in a variety of formats. Then, both the librarian and the instructor can identify other specialized resources for the student. Also, the librarian can help students to see many sides of an issue and help students evaluate the suitability of the information they find.

Collaboration can be both formal and informal. The Ocotillo Library Users Group can be an effective tool for promoting collaboration if we can find a way of recruiting more classroom faculty to participate. Another way to promote collaboration among librarians and classroom faculty,which is going on in colleges and universities nationwide, is to require a library component with the required Freshman English component. We are committed to researching, discussing, and recommending effective methods of encouraging collaboration among faculty.

Assessing and sharing our current collections. In discussing the feasibility and desirability of sharing collections, we feel it is important to have a clear picture of what we currently have in our collections. To that end, this committee recommends that libraries across the District perform an assessment, such as the Northwest Collections Assessment. To be of real value, the assessment should include non-print resources, including Media software and instructional software. Assessment might lead to a discussion of trading resources to enhance current collections.

Improving the quality of dispatching loaded materials among colleges. This committee applauds the ongoing efforts of LAREDO to develop procedures to expedite the sharing of library resources across the District.

Expanding the use of lease-purchase agreements in building collections. The lease-purchase agreement offers two District advantages to MCCCD libraries. First, it enables libraries to purchase only those materials found useful by faculty and students. Second, lease-purchase agreements result in lower costs of materials that libraries do choose to purchase.

Preserving and augmenting library collections in an era of difficult budgetary realities. This committee is concerned about ways in which MCCCD can maintain its competitive informational edge at a time when education budgets are threatened. One suggestion we explore this year is the formation of traveling and/or rotating collections that support specialized or unique curriculum.

Can MCCCD provide some/all funding for a collection that would be a District-wide resource?
What if the content of a rotating collection is relevant to only a few colleges?
How can we determine what content would be most appropriate for rotating collections?
How can colleges share the cost of purchasing materials for rotating collections?
Who will "own" the materials?
Can libraries loan materials to a rotating collection on a permanent basis?
How can class scheduling be coordinated with the scheduling of the rotating collection?
Where will rotating collections be stored when they are not in use?
Will rotating collections contain nonprint material, such as sculptures?
Who would be responsible for developing rotating collections?
Could the collection be centrally located with fax or document delivery service?

This committee wishes to continue discussion of the possibilities offered by the concept of rotating collections to maximize limited resources.

Achieving Equity among Colleges in Access to Databases. One of the biggest concerns of this committee continues to be the great disparity among colleges and centers with regard to the availability of databases to students and faculty. We plan to continue discussion of this problem, and we will actively seek solutions. We believe that all MCCCD faculty and students should enjoy the best access to information that we can offer.

Index

Ocotillo Report '93

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