Providing Access to Print Materials

While many of our materials are online, print materials continue to be used. Indeed, studies show that students prefer to study using print books rather than electronic, but that is a story for another day. For now, with campus buildings closed and students and faculty scattered all over, our Access Services staff – Amy Jones, Natasha Finnegan, Cassy Lewis and Susie Ruddy – have stepped up to help people get whatever print materials they need.

Here are some of the ways in which we are helping:

• Scanning print course reserve items, including chapters of textbooks for students who couldn’t afford to buy the textbook, plus six volumes of monologues for theatre students who needed them for class.
• Scanning print journal articles and book chapters from our collection for students and faculty – we normally provide this service for distance students, and for the time being, of course, all our students are distance students.
• Serving as a lender for a special inter-library loan group, making our materials accessible as a goodwill gesture to other libraries.
• Collaborating with the Office of Instructional Design and Delivery to make DVDs in our collection available for streaming in the campus learning management system, if they are not available for purchase as streaming media.
• Making books from our leisure collection available for pick-up by SU folks living locally to help them deal with boredom (our local public library, like most libraries, is closed).

And here are some of the thank-you messages we have received:

“Just want to say thank you for your help and hard work!” – Undergraduate student

“THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU” – Mary Gunther, Biology Department faculty

“Some of my students are REALLY appreciative and [the scans are] totally readable so thank you so much!” – Linda Cockey, Music Program faculty