Photograph of Young Library 2016 by David Bennet/ Kentucky Christian University
TO: Members of the Faculty
FROM: Naulayne R Enders
DATE: August 6, 2024
RE: Information Update
Young Library, as usual, has been busy this summer. We hired a new Library Assistant, set up an individual e-book purchasing system to help faculty find the best OER/OAR resources for their courses, partnered with Carter County Public Library to deliver a virtual component to the summer reading program for the community, and maintained student engagement through our Summer Reading Challenge, Frugal Living for College Students Guide/Blog and Library newsletter. Our goal is to assist you and your students in meeting your course goals. Please do not hesitate to contact us for any research, instruction, or information needs. We love what we do and enjoy the opportunities to provide information to both you and your students.
Here are our summer highlights and some updates.
HOURS/ STAFFING
Hours: Our library hours for the fall semester are as follows:
|
DAYS |
TIMES |
|
Monday |
8am - 10pm |
|
Tuesday |
8am - 10pm |
|
Wednesday |
8am - 10pm |
|
Thursday |
8am - 10pm |
|
Friday |
8am - 5pm |
|
Saturday |
CLOSED |
|
Sunday |
3pm - 10pm |
Extended hours: The extending of library hours the week before midterms and finals, as well as the week of midterms and finals, will be continued this semester.
New Library Assistant: Our new Library Assistant is Ally Collins. She is a 2024 graduate from KCU with a double major in Business and Bible and Ministry. She has been a library work study student for the past 4 years. Josh and I think she is phenomenal! Please stop by the library and introduce yourself as a co-worker and not as an instructor. We are excited with all that she will add to our library staff!
SUMMER READING CHALLENGE
Our Summer Reading Challenge has had more participation than ever before. The last day to submit titles is September 5th. We have had great participation from faculty and staff, an increasing number of alumni, and several returning students. Please encourage your students to participate whenever you have an opportunity.
FRUGAL LIVING GUIDE AND NEWSLETTER
Our Frugal Living Guide began just before Spring Break last semester. So far, we have had over 700 views! We are thrilled with that number after 5 months. We will continue to update that guide. Be watching for updates around the 15th of every month. If you have ideas of things that your students could benefit from, please let us know. We would be happy to do the research and add the post!
Our Library Newsletter has now been "published" for over 10 years! We use this to promote reading across campus, technology skills, and provide information on library events. If there is something your students are struggling with, let us know! We would be happy to include it on our newsletter.
OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES AND OPEN AFFORDABLE RESOURCES
Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Affordable Resources (OAR) are becoming more prevalent throughout campus. In our library we generally define these terms in the following ways:
Both types of resources are currently being used on campus.
On February 14, 2024, Rob O'Lynn and I presented OAER Framework for Collaborative Identification at an ACA OAER online workshop. From that workshop we created a guide to help in your selection of OER resources. This guide does not expect you to find your own resources, rather it is designed to help the library and the faculty member work together to find the best resources for your students. This process allows you to find resources for objectives rather than always moving textbook to textbook. This fall College 101 has changed their OER textbook to a series of articles that directly addresses the information for each objective of their course. This will work well for them.
We also activated a tool this summer with EBSCO that will allow us to purchase individual e-books. This tool allows me to determine if an e-book will allow an unlimited number of simultaneous users. Books that allow this can be used as OAR texts for courses. We used this tool to purchase an e-book for the Old Testament course this fall. This e-book cost the library about $27 for unlimited simultaneous access, thus providing a "free" OAR textbook for our students. I am happy to work with you using this tool. It is available to meet resource needs for subject areas that do not have as many good options for OER.
If you are using OER or OAR resources this semester, please fill out the KCU OER Textbook adoption form. Please also ensure that any adjuncts that are using an OER text also fill out this form. The form has been updated.
PERSONAL LIBRARIAN MEETINGS
Personal Librarian meetings will be scheduled using Google calendar. Students will be meeting face-to-face. Directions for scheduling that meeting will be sent to all College 101 faculty and any other faculty who request it. The link as well as the information that is covered during this meeting is available here.
EMBEDDED LIBRARIANS
Just a reminder, we are embedded in all fully online courses. We are also happy to be embedded in any course where you feel it would be helpful to your students. Please feel free to contact the library if you have any concerns or questions.
RESERVE FORM
Just a friendly reminder – all items to be placed on reserve, must be accompanied by a reserve form. You are welcome to use the Online form or the send a printed form over with your reserve items. (https://forms.gle/4aFxAyrnxx6CLsJ48). If you use the online form, please submit a different form for each title that you are placing on reserve, even if those items are for the same course. Those forms can be emailed to Ally Collins at amcollins@kcu.edu.
DATABASE REMINDERS
We added two new databases last year. Access World News Research Collection will cover current events using local and national newspapers. This will include newspapers such as The Independent, The Lexington Herald-Leader, The Huntington Dispatch, and The Louisville Courier-Journal. Students will be able to keep up with their hometowns. In the middle of the semester we upgraded Business Source Premier to Business Source Complete. This has increased access to business articles and provides a greater number of them in Full-Text.
I also want to remind everyone that we do have a streaming Academic video source. Go to our Databases page and scroll to the bottom until you see Academic Street Press. You will be able to access this database from here. If you need help with navigation or you would like for me to present a "how to do it" at a department meeting, please let me know.
TECHNOLOGY AVAILABILITY
Young Library has a total of 5 laptop computers that we purchased during Covid for student, faculty, and staff use. These computers do have cameras. We are happy to loan out computers for short term reasons. However, if you need all of your students to take a test on a computer at the same time, please reserve the electronic classroom. We do not have enough availability to check out laptops to students for an entire semester. If you have a need, please feel free to contact me and we can discuss solutions and options.
FACULTY PACKETS
Your library faculty update packet for 2024 is again available electronically. You can locate it at the bottom of the For Faculty section of our web page. To locate this section:
-Go to www.kcu.edu/library > Click on Information in the column on the left > Click on For Faculty.
Or you can used this QR code to go directly to the page:
We look forward to working with all of you this coming year. Please let us know if we can be of any help to you.
Sincerely,
Naulayne R Enders
