ILS504 - Reference & Information Resources and Services

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Lay of the Land

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You are required to take a tour of Buley Library resources or any library in which you will be doing your work for this course. If you choose another library provide the URL for that library to the instructor. This assignment is designed to help you get a feel of the resources in the library that you choose to do your work for the course. This library's resources will be used in addition to the resources at Buley which are accessible to you as a student at SCSU. You may use your local library if it has the resources that you will need. It may not have the professional reading materials.

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Since I am currently enrolled in all of my courses online, I will be accessing the Buley Library online. This paper will note my observations of the structure of the website in addition to the resources available for my use.

Buley Library Homepage

My first observation is that the library homepage is clean in its presentation, not cluttered or fussy. I appreciate the plain white background as well as the subtle colors that don’t compete with the information listed – this allows the words that are in color to take on greater significance. The quick links are helpful as are the links at the bottom of the page that give the user more information about the physical space of the library as well as links to collections, directions, policies, and a quick link to the Library Director. From here the first stop I made was to look for the online reserved article for our first assignment. I clicked on the link: Online Reserve Articles: By Professor – By Course and was taken to the Digital Course Reserves Page. Again, It was clearly written and within minutes I linked to CONSULS and accessed the article.

Find a Book

The CONSULS catalog link was divided into books, multi-media, children’s and eBooks. I especially liked the New Resources page and learned that 188 resources were added for ILS in 2008 and 84 in 2009 FY. The link to other library catalogs was helpful as was the link for Project request.

Find Articles

These are the resources that I have used most frequently at Buley. The electronic resources, databases and journals and database aggregators range from JSTOR to ERIC to Medline. Although I haven’t required the service yet, I appreciate that it is possible to schedule a personalized research session with a librarian. The box listing the new resources is valuable as it is a quick way to find out what is new without wading through all the listings.

Find by Subject

Again, another layer of search options. These allow the user to browse for needed information or simply based on personal interests. Since I am a librarian at a K-9 school, the Children’s Literature link was of special interest.

Library Services

I was pleased to see that teachers and students are able to schedule classes and instruction in how to utilize the library to its best advantage. The Reference Department section was interesting, especially in light of our assignment on reference services. I learned from this page that SCSU has eight reference librarians in addition to the subject librarians. Access to the reference policies was informative, especially the policy for print resources and weeding policies.  I believe it is important to be aware of policies and procedures and how they are applied in the day-to-day running of a library. One of the resources that I was not aware of was The RefWorks bibliography and database manager. This is definitely something I will use from now on for my research projects.

Library Homepage for Distance Education

This is the page I most frequently use for my coursework. I usually start here as a jumping off point to get to the information sites I need for specific projects. Again, the separate listings for reference materials, databases and journals makes searching simplified. I appreciate the work that Rebecca Hedreen, Distance Education Librarian does to keep the links and resources current.

Search the Web

I must say that this page is impressive.  I love the fact that Google Scholar and Windows Live Search Academic both have Buley holdings information. This will be incredibly helpful when looking for print and electronic resources that I can access. I think we all know the frustration of waiting for that ILL that only comes in after the due date of the assignment. The list of specialized search engines and subject directories are extensive. This is the place where I will do most of my online searches from now on.

Conclusion

In touring the Buley Library Website, I was impressed with the breadth and depth of the information available to SCSU and other state university students. The site is user friendly and information is easily accessible. In the event that a user is not able to find the information needed, there are several options to contact a librarian and get the necessary help to get pointed in the right direction.