Lib 204 Project 3

Lib 204- Intro to Reference Services

                                          Project 3

To assist new Long Beach City College Library reference users, I have created a very basic, step by step guide to accessing the selection of subscription online databases.

    Getting Started Searching LBCC Subscription Databases

Step One:      You must first be a current student, faculty member or staff of LBCC possessing a valid college ID number to assess the subscription databases.  Access the college website at http:// www.lbcc.edu/                                        

Step Two:       From this page scroll down to Library selection and click on it. This will open to http://lib.lbccedu/  which is Library@Long Beach City College. Next, if you are   accessing the library from home or   another location than the campus, you will need to click on the off campus box   which is located under the site navigation selection list.  You will be prompted to enter your last name and college Id.
              

StepThree       Now, you are ready to determine the type of academic/informational search you need to perform by selecting a database such as Voyager or Proquest to begin your search.

                                               Blog Reflection #8

To educate college students I would choose an academic library. Some examples of library instruction that would be appropriate for college students have been explored and one of these would include creating a classroom setting type of learning which would improve the way students attempt to find their desired information.  This could be accomplished by introducing students to information when they are in the process of a research project and leading them to more complicated research vehicles

Another form of instruction could be accomplished by using interactive tutorials.  One tutorial tool could cover the correct way to search a library catalog and/or how to narrow down their topics is a tool I feel would be helpful.  A tutorial helping tool which would also help college students would be a set of instructions helping students to become familiar with the many sources available for research such as the Web and library databases to name a few.

Blog Refelection #7

Blog Reflection #7

When directing a patron how to complete a topic search on Crashes Caused by Driving while texting, I would first suggest that they search Proquest search  engine as this would have a wide range of articles and information to gather research from.   Next,   I would suggest one of the government web searches as these types of driving statistics are a function of the government and would be current in researching material for this subject. 

I feel that Wikipedia and the patron’s own search engine should only be used after these search options have been utilized for their regulated and monitored information. Wikipedia is very handy as is Google but they might not be as correct as one of the government sites. The Britannica.com would be suggested before the patron’s own search engine or Wimped and would lead to more valuable and verified information.  The online version of Britannica can be updated much faster the print copy.

With the many available library academic search engines directing a patron the right one for their task should be much easier now than it would have been some year ago.

Project 2: Proposal to Create Reference Library

            I would like to propose a new library in the city of Long Beach, CA. It will be open to all but focus aimed towards schoolchildren pre-k to grade 12^th but with strong focus on elementary levels and high school levels. This library will have strong focus on academics as well as college prep help and tutoring. I feel the library’s that are offered to schoolchildren especially that are housed in their schools are very lacking now. Thus, causing many student to be unprepared when they enter the college life and have to do more reports and research papers leaving them vulnerable to the world of “googling” everything thing they are asked to search. From what I have witnessed, the public libraries are trying to make their libraries more open and helpful to students but it is just not as focused as I would like it. Therefore, I would like to have the opportunity to propose a library that is based for students so they can have more books on their level available for them and more tutoring resources as well as opportunities to learn better researching and referencing skills. Also, if we can provide college assistance and cater to helping students understand more about higher education and the benefits. With this proposal, I am hoping to construct a whole library that can be the hotspot where students seeking higher information of libraries can come converge and gain a better insight. I have not come up with a name as this can be brought up at a different time. I feel this best be placed under academic library status.

            In the city of Long Beach, CA the population breakdown is roughly 130,320 youth between ages of five and under to 19year, which is 28.5% of the population. The total Long Beach population is 462,257 people ranging from youth to adults aged 19 to 40. The Population breakdown by age is 13.6% children from 5 and under to 9years old, 6.9% will be the young adults or “tweens” aged 10 to 14 years old and last but not least would be teenagers 15 to 19 years old taking up 7.7% of the population. I feel the youth/children would benefit most from children educational based learning materials such as mathematic workbooks and we can also provide help for their parents on children education betterment as well as children health, nutrition and safety. Then for the older groups like the 10 to 14 age group (31,715) we can provide young adult novels for them as well as college based materials just to get them focused and thinking of that ahead of time. We can also get them started on referencing and researching by having sessions or after school tutoring/classes where a librarian can show them how fun it is to research or bring some kind of excitement to learning more about the library and learning that the librarian is their friend not someone to avoid. I feel the teenagers would benefit most from this new library because of the focus on college higher education as well as gaining more knowledge on how to work with the large reference materials offered through my library. This will in turn help them a lot when they have to do a lot of research papers and the tutoring will help them on site if they are struggling with what or how to do a certain thing for their projects/assignments. But we will not count out adults, which take up 31.6% from ages 20 to 40 who are in need of these resources for college based assignments as well as work related or many other assorted reasons they will need the services. Long beach is a very diverse community so our library will cater to all the languages most popular and do its best to make everyone welcome but since majority of our patrons will be student aged they will speak English first and foremost but we would also like to cater to their parents who may speak another langue first nature. So the different ethnicities consists of all the age groups but Caucasians are 213,066 making up a larger portion of the ethnic population at 46.1%, after that comes Hispanics at 40.8% around 188,412 of the population, followed by African Americans/Black at 62,603 residents at 13.5%. Finally yet importantly would be Asian American and other races at 20%. We will try to make this library as diverse as the city of Long Beach is and welcoming to all races and ethnicities. So that means including literature and materials in all the preferred most spoken languages throughout long beach which would be English, Spanish, Korean, Talog, Vietnamese and Japanese.

            I feel we would be most comparable to the Long Beach Public Library Mark Twain.  Since they tend to offer a lot of community based help such as tutoring and bilingual computer classes for free since the area is lower income. We would be a larger library since Mark Twain is more condensed even after they rebuilt the library it still feels a little small for what they would like to do and our branch of the website will offer more self help for those not able to make it to the library on a regular bases. Also they are a little low on librarians from my experience the few times I would make my way to this library due to location they would be on break or helping and assisting others but there was a long line just for one librarian and its always one standard librarian who seems overworked but still very helpful. But at our library we will have at least 4 or so librarians on call so there will never be more than one person waiting for help. In my opinion I feel when you make someone’s library visit fast but helpful and very insightful (especially when it comes to young people) they will be more inclined to come back again and again and gain a new found love for visiting the library that we had when growing up. 

            As stated above we envision this library to be geared more towards the high school elementary field and we will have a very open library. We will have a surplus of young adult novels and materials because the Main Branch has the right idea but they always seem to be out of what one is looking for so at our library we will always have multiples in stock and available for young adult patrons. Also we want our librarians to come off as approachable, caring, parental figures hoping for the best for everyone and open for helping and assisting. it will have a family learning atmosphere because I feel that provides for better learning and creativity for everyone around. We will also be providing a lot homework help and referencing service workshops to help with proper researching as well.

            Since we have mostly student patrons will be students we will try to have the most up to date general encyclopedias and dictionaries. But we will have both hard copies and electronic of them available since most of our patrons will be of the technological age. Our reference collections will contain hard copy and electronic materials to please patrons of all backgrounds and ages.  For our ready references we will make sure to have the most up to date almanacs, handbooks and manuals as well as having the largest specific subject encyclopedias for government, sciences, technology, sports reference, education especially since these library is geared toward students.  Our library will also have large electronic database collection of geographical, government and biographical sources/documents that will go towards their researching, homework look up, and assisting with anything else, they would need for their class work. Finally yet importantly, what would make our reference collection stand out more than other libraries would be to have more hands on reference sources especially for the younger groups. Therefore, we will have world maps and globes to assist in geography knowledge, musical instruments and sheet music to provide more interest in the arts and our library will be more of a kinesthetic environment where youth and young adults can come and experience things that can get their creative ideas flowing. To know the library can actually be the start of everything good as well as a great place to learn and be free to ask for help in bettering their understanding of the inner workings.

WORKS CITED

LBPL Website - Homepage." LBPL Website". n.d. Web. 28 Mar. 2012.
http://www.lbpl.org/default.asp.
Profile of General Population Characteristics: 2010 2010 Demographic Profile Data." American FactFinder. U.S. Census Bureau, 2010 Census., n.d. Web. 29 Mar. 2012.http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=DEC_10_DP_DPDP1&prodType=table.

Blog Reflection #6

As I reflect on the information I have received in the past weeks I realize what a large part reference information services have in everyday information gatherings.  I enjoyed learning to search using the many library search engines such as using web search engines such as LBCC Voyager.  The reference dictionaries, where highly detailed biographical searches can be performed, were also excellent search tools to learn about.  The governmental search engine, www.census.gov is very informative also.  I found much more information such as population growth and the average income of a particular geographical area, by using this one website than performing a nongovernmental or nonacademic web search such as commonly used Google or Yahoo.

 As I compared how much more effort is used when performing print searches for biographical information it is much more efficient to use a web search engine such as the many reference sources I have been exposed to through researching the last topics covered in this library research class such as Who’s Who in America, as I have mentioned before and Biography.com which shows birthdates, death dates, and contains over 25,000 biographies of well known people.

 

LIB204 BLOG REFLECTION #5

BLOG REFLECTION #5

Since learning about the many resources for conducting
statistics and other geographical or biographical information searches, it
appears that library research tools would be better suited for performing a
more precise and faster search of certain desired information such as printed infromation. The ability to search for specific biographical information by the brief dictionarybiographical method or a more detailed name or occupational method could not beas easily performed using one of the more commonly used search engines such as Google or Yahoo. Usually, many site offerings would be offered by these search engines which would then have to be narrowed in scope to find the exact information needed.

After researching for a specific statistic or biographical subject,
a good way to determine if this information is correct is to cross check more
than one website offering the same information. Some cross checking of information could be performed by checking indexes which would show where a person might be found and the popular Who’s Who in America resource, to name two of many searches available. Other ways to check the validity of biographical resources would be to check the authority, frequency of updates and scope of information offered. When concerned about the accuracy of a web offering, I find a very informative website to detail what to use as a validating tool is:
http://www.law.siu.edu/lawlib/guides/eval.htm.
Finding the information needed for certain research is important and secondly verifying the resource information for accuracy should also be a major concern to the serious researcher.

BLOG REFLECTION #4

BLOG REFLECTION #4

As more library materials are made available on Electronic databases, the public comes to expect more data resources to be available on the library database. When purchasing new materials as manager of a public library, I would purchase electronic materials that library patrons could easily and conveniently access from their home computer or mobile access. When considering the storage expense and maintenance of hardcopy resource journals, many new resource additions will be purchased as electronic data.

As research on electronic databases show, improvements will have to be made in archiving large databases in the near future to preserve resource databases for future generations of online users. The fact is that printed material available as hard copy journals is not becoming obsolete because of electronic databases but because most printed journal materials is out of print. As for my personal experience with using electronic databases I found the vast amount of information offered is staggering. While there is a vast amount of electronic resource information like the ProQest databases, a user would still have to knowledge of how to perform productive searches to access the electronic information. I found this to be time consuming while researching scholarly journals. I do agree that in all, electronic data bases are still the wave of the present and future.

Library collections would be of the most benefit to academic sources such as schools, universities and other scholarly research needs. Hard copy journals would best kept in an academic setting library.