An interested article from the July/August issue of Educause Review, The Changing Information Services Needs of Faculty, highlights results from a survey conducted in 2006 to assess the attitudes and perceptions of academic collection development librarians and faculty towards information services in the electronic environment. Let us know what you think about this transition away from print and your needs in finding materials online.
I depend on the JSRCC campus library for access to scholarly journals. Since scholarly research isn’t a prized part of the teaching job in a community college, I spend much less time reading journals in my field than I used to but somewhat more time pre-screening databases for student use in the courses I teach that require research.
In addition, the web-accessible pages on research methods and documentation are better than anything my students or I can find online–more accurate and with samples for databases my students are likely to use.
The gateway function is still crucial, therefore, though I suspect that the disparities that exist by discipline may have something to do with how much the discipline’s organizations perform this gateway function for their members.
Thanks for your feeback on how you use the JSRCC library and what you have found useful. Can you explain what you mean about the “gateway function?” Are you referring to the subject and course guides available on the library’s web site?