The Library Transformation Team has been hard at work ensuring that the unified Vermont State Colleges System (VSCS) library services will continue and improve support for students and faculty at Vermont State University and the Community College of Vermont. The VSCS Libraries’ mission statement lays out that the “libraries support learning and teaching, research, creation of knowledge, intellectual growth, and enrichment of the academic experience by providing staff expertise and access to information, services, facilities, and technology.”
The team wants to share the following highlights in their work, starting with academic focus:
- The library’s entire focus revolves around faculty, staff, and student needs. Every upgrade to services and resources is based on evidence backed up by the way our community uses the library, both physically and virtually.
- The library’s focus will be to offer resources that align with the VSC’s curriculum and services including patron driven resource purchasing, open educational resources (OER) guidance, asynchronous and synchronous library workshops, and information literacy instruction.
In creating a Digital First model to ensure all students, faculty, and staff from VTSU and CCV have access to library resources, we are purchasing digital resources so that students and faculty can access the resources needed for their courses and research from wherever they are.
Collection Development to ensure that it is patron driven, student first, and accessible to all:
- The library’s collection development plan is moving toward a patron driven approach. We want to ensure that the resources needed and requested by faculty, staff, and students are available.
- The goal of the collection is to maintain relevancy, vibrancy, and ensure the collection supports and promotes diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and social justice.
The new library’s website is planning a soft launch in January 2023, with more updates and details about the services and resources the new VSC Library has to offer, as well as some workshop opportunities from our liaison librarian team around a variety of topics.
To summarize, we are excited to offer the following highlights of our academic-focused, digital-first, VSC Library to meet the community’s needs:
- The library will continue to be inclusive in our resources and services. We will assist everyone in the community regardless of race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.
- We will continue to purchase print books by request (our new patron-driven approach) to be added to the collection. We will be purchasing eBooks on demand in our Discovery Search, which triggers a purchase of an eBook after a certain amount of uses.
- Books will continue to be mailed to students who request them, a longstanding feature of libraries in the VSC and reflective of the commitment to access.
- Assistance for faculty with finding OER to replace costly course-required reading.
- Faculty and students will have access to Information Literacy learning objects from Credo Reference. Library Liaison Librarians will be working within academic programs to package Credo Reference Information Literacy Modules to meet the needs for specific programs and academic areas for use by students in Canvas.
- Chat reference coverage will be extended to 24/7, with our Liaison Librarians during the day and then chat coop professional librarians at night to support our students through LibAnswers.