Hours, Collection Use, and Building Use

With more than a million volumes, Brooklyn College is one of the largest academic libraries in New York State. Each day more than 2,000 students and faculty enter its doors, whether to find a title in the online catalog, borrow a book, listen to a sonata, examine a manuscript, browse the electronic journals, or explore the Internet's global information resources.

In 1997-1998 the Library delivered 297 days and 2,206 hours of service. The Library is open 64 hours a week.

263,353 items were circulated to readers, up 27% over the previous academic year. Another 443,035 were used in-house, an increase of 19%. 761,852 readers used the Library, 2,574 per service day.
 

Information Services

"The technology has been much more stable this year. Much of the reluctance to rely on electronic versions of products has disappeared. The wealth of material on the Internet has also added to the dependence on electronic resources." Susan Vaughn, Associate Librarian for Collection Development
 

"The Web browsing area has added a whole new dimension to Information Services. Students seeking information for classroom assignments or using their e-mail accounts kept both professional and support staff extremely busy. This new area of service has captured students' attention, and the machines are used incessantly throughout the day." Anthony Cucchiara, Associate Librarian for Information Services and Distinctive Collections
 

"As REM once said, 'It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.'" Jane Cramer, Government Publications Librarian
 

The Library has embraced the challenges of the Information Age, building a reputation for leadership throughout Brooklyn, the City University of New York, and beyond. In 1997-1998, E-reference, E-reserves, and E-renewals all debuted. Reference queries, reserve book lists, and book renewals can all be transmitted electronically to Library staff.

42,022 students used the Library's two Web browsing clusters to search the Web for their academic assignments, access faculty course pages, check their E-mail, or ... surf.

• Our initial Web center completed its second year, clocking 21,596 student users--an increase of 71% over 1996-1997 activity.
• In September the Library opened a second Web cluster, thanks to equipment and infrastructure funded by the University. As the year progressed, its usage ballooned from 905 students in September to a record 3,052 in March. By year's end, 20,426 students used this new facility. It was necessary to add well-trained para-professionals to support them.

Instruction

"Today's information environment is an electronic Tower of Babel, and students need more direction." Barbra Buckner Higginbotham, Chief Librarian and Executive Director of Academic Information Technologies
 

"Assisting students in their search for qualitative material and teaching them how to recognize it when they see it remains our greatest hurdle in using Web resources." Jane Cramer, Government Publications Librarian
 

Brooklyn College is unique in its vision for Library instruction: we provide instruction not only for students, but for the entire College community. In 1997-1998, 351 classes reached 3,992 persons:
 

162  course-related classes	3,440 persons
150  Workshop Center sessions	421 persons
39   faculty workshops	131 persons
351  CLASSES	3,992 PERSONS

The Workshop Center completed its second year. Here, many different drop-in classes are offered throughout the day. Each lasts about a half-hour and focuses on a specific skill--locating journal articles, or searching the online catalog. New workshops (beginning and advanced) on searching the Web and Lexis-Nexis proved very popular.

The Web has added new emphasis to one of librarians' oldest roles, teaching students to assess the information they find. In the recent past when the Library was very much a physical place and librarians selected every volume in the building, there was little concern that students might find and use substandard resources. But today students are finding quantities of material that have not undergone any sort of evaluation. On the Web, quality runs the gamut from "none" to "high" and a resource with an exciting look and feel often lacks the content to back it up.

All this suggests a greater need for library instruction, and models that go beyond traditional approaches. In the coming year, we will recruit for an Information Literacy Specialist and develop a program designed to give all students common strategies for locating information, evaluating what they find, choosing the best resources, and using them effectively.