ICC has around 14,000 students and is a 2 year community college. I went to speak with Becky Houghton about all things tech in the library. ICC has 3 branches: Main, Downtown, and North. I talked to Becky about the main branch where all the cool things happen first. The main branch has 80 stationary computers, 95000 print books, and tons of tables, big chairs, ottomans and a wall of windows. Most of the furniture is hand-me-down from the rest of the college or has been there for at least a decade. While it doesn’t look new, hip, and fresh it’s already broken in and comfy. But I came to talk about tech stuff so on to it.
Ebooks – ICC has 54000 from two vendors : NetLibrary & Ebrary. They are cataloged in with the regular print books and it is generally suggested that you use FireFox to view them as IE has issues sometimes with them. While they have been growing in popularity they have yet to out do books in circulation numbers or requests. This could be do to the fact that teachers are still asking for print sources and of course a students brain will automatically go to a physical book.
In fact Becky gave me a list of highest to lowest in check-out and popularity with the patrons
1. Online Databases
2. Print Books
3. ebooks
4. Print Journals & Reference
5. AV
Currently ICC does not have any handheld ebook readers but that could change as industry formats become more standard. Right now the reasoning is that you need different ebook readers for different formats. EX. The Kindle only takes Amazon books and Sony only accepts XX books, while RCA ebooks readers only read YY books. Handheld ebook readers are expensive and while ICC would like to take part in this They would rather wait until one comes out that reads the majority of ebooks.
Other new tech stuff. – ICC is now charging out laptops to patrons with the condition that they stay in the library and sign a laptop user agreement. Because this is very new not that many have been checked out yet, but this patron is extremely happy to hear it.
They are also subscribing to streaming video. This can be expensive depending on how many streams you would like. Example. Single streams would be shown by the teacher in class. Multi streams could be posted to Blackboard for all to see. A single stream can cost $35 – $50 and a Multi stream can go as high as $300 or more. Single streams are relatively close in price to DVD’s but without the storage and caretaking expenses. The vendor has all the streams on their server and maintains them for their subscribers. This also cuts down on student workers running to deliver a VHS tape/ DVD, (the VHS tapes/ DVD being held hostage by faculty) and confusion.
The biggest question I had was what do you not have that you want? The answer is Web effects. It would cross references databases so instead of just searching 1 like EbscoHost you’ll be searching all of them. Oh the pleasure! Times have changed you can’t just go through all the databases, ICC has hundreds of them
As for the future Becky sees print reference going the way of the print journal and becoming instinct as so much is done on-line, more being done with ebooks, and hopefully a make-over for the library.
