There are many places to buy educational media, some better than others.  Some reliable vendors are listed below–are there any others that you’ve found useful for particular subjects? Thanks to Christine Godin for this list!

SUGGESTED AUDIOVISUAL VENDOR WEBSITES

ABC News Store – http://www.abcnewsstore.com/

Agency For Instructional Technology – http://www.ait.net/

AIMS Multimedia – http://www.aimsmultimedia.com/

Ambrose Video – http://www.ambrosevideo.com/

Annenberg Media – http://www.learner.org/index.html

Bullfrog Films – http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/

California Newsreel – http://www.newsreel.org/main.asp

The Cinema Guild – http://www.cinemaguild.com/

CD Hotlist (Baker and Taylor) – http://cdhotlist.btol.com/

Distribution Video and Audio – http://www.dvalibrary.com/

Educational Video Network – https://www.evndirect.com/

Facets Multimedia – http://www.facets.org/asticat

Films Media Group – http://www.filmsmediagroup.com/

GPN Educational Media – http://shopgpn.com/

Human Relations Media – http://www.humanrelationsmedia.com/

Library Video – http://www.libraryvideo.com/

Mastervision – http://www.mastervision.com/index.html

National Film Board of Canada – http://www.nfb.ca/

PBS – http://www.shoppbs.org/home/index.jsp

Teachers Media Company – http://www.teachersvideo.com/

United Learning – http://www.unitedlearning.com/index.cfm

World of Reading – http://www.wor.com/shopping/

Visual Learning Company – http://www.visuallearningco.com/

Embedded Librarian/Distance Ed/Faculty Relations Group

-For blended (distance and on-campus) classes, faculty  are more hesitant to use embedded librarians because they’re protective of hours they have in person with their students

- There are still problems recruiting faculty members to even teach distance ed classes, let alone work with the library

-Talked about the “road of least resistance”-working with faculty you already have a good relationship with, getting one or two to buy into embedded librarian idea, and then other faculty will hopefully follow

-Buy-in from the campus as a whole also helps-faculty, administrators, etc. There is the problem of faculty already feeling they have too much to cover in their subject lesson plans-therefore they are hesitant to use instruction or embedded librarian services, thinking it will cut too much into class time

-Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools lists information literacy competency as a standard of excellence

-One school sets up two part sessions-Part 1, librarians come to the class, then in Part II, students come to the library to start on research with professor supervision

-The American Association of Community College (AACC ) has a position statement on information literacy may be helpful in getting an information literacy program off the ground. You can find it here: http://webadmin.aacc.nche.edu/About/Positions/Pages/ps05052008.aspx

-People can meet the standards above differently-for instance different departments have to say how they will cover standards

- Outreach to faculty is important. One person described how his school has a position that just coordinates outreach, while others do it the more traditional way with different librarians being liaisons to different subject areas.

-Discussed how distance ed programs are sometimes “growing in a vacuum” separate from other college services

-Some campuses are using distance ed programs to drive up enrollment without giving students the same level of service as on-campus students can enjoy

- Difficulty of actually getting to know distance ed faculty, especially adjuncts who live and work in other areas and don’t often come to campus

-Mention of 24/7 Librarian service from Tutor.com

-Marketing things to faculty is important, showing them what the library has. Sometimes just showing teaching faculty how to use resources is better than nothing because they can at least be encouraged to get their students to use the resources.

- Trying to hit up new faculty is important, letting them know what library resources are available

- Two methods of getting information literacy more embedded were briefly discussed:

A.      Making some kind of concept map that illustrates the relationship between information literacy standards and a particular critical thinking model

B.      Working with an assessment committee to get people on board with critical thinking

-More problems working with some departments.  For instance, nursing students need critical thinking skills on a day-to-day basis for their jobs, but nursing faculty sometimes sees the point of this quickly, sometimes they don’t

-It takes time to do tutorials for distance students, and many community colleges don’t have time do their own. We mentioned TILT (http://tilt.lib.utsystem.edu/)  and  Research Tutor (http://infotutor.sdsu.edu/icdev/htdocs/index.html)

Information Literacy

Read CJCLS list.

 What level of info. literacy?  Palo Alto has: Information Resources Certificate, 7 classes, free Continuing Ed. Credit, introduction to Library, Databases, MLA, APA, Web search, Info. evaluation.  Instructors can schedule a BI class, also available online (students take a quiz).  No quiz in face-to-face.  Palo Alto enrollment 8,000.  Faculty offer extra credit for certificate completion.  Some discussion of problem of babysitting for absent faculty.  Palo Alto requires professor presence.  They offer desktop instruction for faculty, face-to-face, one-on-one with librarian.

Faculty know their discipline but they don’t know all library has to offer to support the discipline.  Outreach to public-public can attend the courses.

Distance Learning-possibly create position to deal with distance ed., produce online content.

Vendor representative (Demco) talked about training issues.  Their training is task oriented,  based on marketing research, and is face-to-face.

Northampton CC (?) worked to get faculty involved.  They wrote a grant for support to assess information literacy.  Faculty members now advertise the Info. Lit. program to other faculty members.  Another CC (?) has 10 Info. Lit. classes for “at risk” students.  Total of 70 classes, 2 reference librarians.  Online tutorials requested by faculty for their online students. 

Another group also addressed information literacy, particularly in the online environment.  Bucks Co. CC developing web tutorials.    Cuesta College is migrating workbook from PDF to interactive print to online.  CA consortium pushing open access textbooks. 

Bucks Co. CC & Oakton CC offering >12 credits free to recently laid off workers.

2^nd part of this discussion

John Berry, past ALA president, spoke about the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the 21^st Century Skills program.  There is an Eluminate group.  A matrix of skills needed and how to address them.  Various literacies are included:  Information, Media, Financial.  Other skills to be developed are:  creativity, innovation, critical thinking, problem solving, life & career skills, health literacy, science & number literacy, etc.  He said this was “traditional, transitional, transformative.”  This grew out of a P-21 initiative. Idea is to use best practices, audience is educators, librarians, leadership, business.  There will be a Conference Within a Conference  at ALA Annual in Chicago-workforce development and innovation in Community College Libraries. 

Learning Commons

One CC had money from a technology fee.  Space came from re-purposing audiovisual area.   Issues as part of the LC–Tutoring department, does it use or not? Are librarians going to be part of LC?

Budget Challenges & Issues

Reports from states (representatives in group): Florida, 25% budget cuts for public libraries, 12% cuts for Comm. Coll.  Ohio-deficit projected for next biennium.   Georgia, some (higher ed.) institutions have been hit harder than others.  Colorado, budgets getting tighter and tighter, 10% cut ordered by governor. 

There was also discussion of e-books vs. print, is it a good investment of funds?  Some libraries do not seem to have much use by students of e-books.  Access is key.  Arapahoe CC has e-books integrated in catalog through AquaBrowser. 

Hot Topics in Community College Librarianship

ALA Midwinter Conference, Denver, CO    January 24, 2009

 More than 40 librarians gathered for the Saturday afternoon discussion group.  In addition to librarians in attendance, 2 representatives from a library vendor were also present.   State budget issues were on everyone’s minds, but other “hot” topics came to the forefront for discussion in small groups.  Topics included: 

–Information literacy

–Information commons

–Embedded librarians

– Standards/Accreditation/Assessment/Measurement

–Outreach

–Distance Education (including blended/hybrid course) Issues

–Promoting faculty involvement

– Renovations

–Budget issues and challenges (growing student body, more demands, less $$, joint-use facilities)

–Media Literacy

–Staffing

The “hottest” of the topics seemed to center around Information Literacy, Standards/Accreditation/Assessment/Measurement, Distance Education, Involving Faculty, and Budget Issues and Challenges.  The following are summaries of notes from each group.  Thanks to the note takers from each table. 

Accreditation/Standards/Assessment, etc.

Representatives from North Central, SACS, Western States.  New standards for accreditation are focused on outcomes which are difficult to measure in libraries.  However, the task is ours to define and prove.  Q.E.P.’s are outcomes-based, an issue that each institution must work on.  Librarians must be in on the Q.E.P. planning sessions and create programs to support Q.E. P.’s.

Everyone is worried about the economy these days for a lot of good reasons. Library workers know that we have to worry about budget cuts even when the economy’s doing pretty well.  College library departments usually don’t bring in the same ways that classes or athletic programs do and thus we’re often one of the first departments under scrutiny when there’s a crunch. This post will discuss how you can make some arguments against budget cuts.

ALA Tough Economy Toolkit

” The toolkit contains information on how to work with decision-makers, ways to work with the media, and talking points to help libraries articulate the role of libraries in times of economic downturn. Talking points on the economic value of libraries, with return-on-investment examples; libraries and the economy; and upswings in library usage are included.  Users are also invited to share their stories of how they have successfully advocated. Recent media coverage of libraries is also featured.”

www.ala.org/tougheconomytoolkit

Recently the topic of library layoffs was discussed on the cjc-l list. These were some of the points that came up in how to argue against such layoffs:

What to do if your admininistration is talking about cutting staff?

-Prove there’s a need. Having hard stats about foot traffic, how the library is making a positive effect can be helpful

-Depending on your school, say that would mean cutting hours. Some administrators work set 8 – 5 schedules and don’t realize that it’s hard to staff the library from 8am – 9pm or 10pm with only a couple of people. Cutting back hours may be more feasible for some than others–many administrators don’t really want library hours being cut back very drastically

-Consider whether your staff if the most vital not to lay off. Nobody wants anyone else getting laid off, but try to look at the big picture at your campus–if some part-time people have to be laid off, are the staff in the library or a testing center etc. most vital?

-Changing job descriptions or making full-time positions part-time can save jobs for some

-Focus on the impact on weakening of library services to students, not on how layoffs could overwork remaining staff members

We’ll put out more on this subject, but community college libraries fill a different niche than university libraries, public libraries, or K-12 libraries, and we need slightly different ways to advocate for ourselves.

What’s the experience at your library? What kind of budget cuts are you experiencing or worried about? Are you fighting back in some different way?

http://ol.scc.spokane.edu/nclr/InfoLit_statement.htm

This statement describes the AACC’s position on information literacy and can be a concise way to advocate for information literacy programs on your campus. Thanks to Alice Lubrecht for providing this information.

Recently, the topics of Project Muse and JSTOR have come up on the CJCLS list. What’s the difference? Are these subscriptions worth it for two-year schools? Here’s a summary of what people said:

JSTOR

–Archival articles going back decades or longer, but usually not the most recent articles from publications

–Not just one subscription, but a one time “archive capital fee” ($1000 for community colleges) and then subscribe to different collections that archive various journals. More info here.

–Great for in-depth historical research but may be an expensive luxury for two-year schools

–Some libraries find that JSTOR is heavily used for research with history, literature, social sciences and government

Project Muse

–Full-text of most recent articles (past five years) so good for more current research

–After the first or second year, the amount of articles users download will increase the subscription price so it’s not longer a flat annual fee

–Various collections available More here.

In brief

–Sometimes faculty sing either products’ praises but they’re using the services more for their own research than for their students

–Like any subscription, the usefulness seems to vary from school to school–some get heavy use, other libraries cancel because use is not as high as other databses

Have you used either Project Muse or JSTOR? Did we miss something important that potential subscribers should know? Please feel free to comment with any thoughts.

How do community college libraries allocate their collection development budgets among various departments?  I was curious about how other librarians handles this–the following is a brief breakdown of their responses I got from the CJCLS listserv some time back:

Community College Collection Development—Departmental Budget Allocations

3 main methods of dividing funds

Play it by ear:
-get requests from faculty, purchase requests unless they’re exorbitant or not useful
-keep track of library-heavy assignments, develop collection around those
-also make purchases for departments that have fewer requests

Rotating allocation schedule – concentrate on several different programs each budget year, then rotate to another set of programs

Allocating budget on criteria such as enrollment, cost of books for subject, etc.

Some other points that came up:

- Librarians divided over whether to let faculty know what they’re spending or not. Most librarians who responded do not like to give faculty dollar amounts.

- Keep in mind programs that are independently accredited—what they need

- Keep in mind new programs and programs that are currently in development

- Don’t leave any program out of the budget loop completely, even if that program doesn’t utilize library resources very often

- Watch out for the occasional instructor who wants to buy expensive or inappropriate materials for his/her own research interests, not really for the curriculum

How do you allocate your budget? What things do you consider? Are you having to change your standard budget allocation practices due to the current economic climate?

Welcome! This blog is intended to share information and ideas among community college libraries of all types and sizes.

Community Collge Libraries Talk will cover anything and everything related to community college library issues.

The blog is maintained by the Membership/Communications Committee of the Community and Junior College Library Section of the American Library Association, but you do NOT have to be a member to contribute comments or any content.