Give to Teachers What Belongs to Teachers

The Nova Southeastern University Alvin Sherman Library, Research, and Information Technology Center opened in December 2001 to accommodate both academic and public users (Nova Southeastern University, 2001). The facility, built as part of a 1999 agreement between Nova Southeastern University (NSU) and the Broward County Board of County Commissioners, serves the public as well as students, staff, and faculty of Nova Southeastern University. Joint-use facilities such as the Sherman Library have existed since the 1970s (Matthews & Calvert, 2007).

According to Pleasants (2013) in his book The Making of Nova Southeastern University, the idea of creating a joint-use facility had a determined advocate in Samuel Morrison, who was the then director of the Broward County Public Library System. Based on Pleasants account, Morrison had mentioned the idea before, but his idea came to fruition during Ray Ferrero Jr.’s presidency. The advantages of a joint-use facility were clear in his mind: “Morison believed that the general public, small business owners, and researchers should have access to a major university collection” (Pleasants, 2013, p. 180). Moreover, Imhoff (2001) believed that “with a joint use library the community gains a more indepth collection when the partner is a college or university.”

As of the end of 2017, the Sherman Library houses 1,176,148 volumes and has access to over 500 databases. Because the Sherman Library has such a robust print and online collection, it is a popular study, research, and cultural center for library users.

According to the 2016 U.S. Census Bureau (2016), Broward County has a population of 1,909,632. The Broward County school district is the sixth largest school district in the country, serving a diverse community of learners from 173 countries and speaking 53 languages (Broward County Public Schools, n.d.). Florida has a large number of parent-educators and homeschoolers with more than 84,000 students and 59,000 families in home education (Florida Department of Education, 2017).

Among the adult population of Broward County, 88.3% are high school graduates or have some college or a college degree (U.S. Census Bureau, 2016). During the 2016–2017 school year, there were 353 grade PK–12 schools in the district, with about 15,897 teachers (National Center for Education Statistics, 2017). Broward County also has 3,995 home education students (Florida Department of Education, 2017). This population could potentially benefit from the education collection at the Sherman Library.

Anyone who lives, works, or goes to school in Broward County is eligible to receive a Sherman Library public card. The Sherman Library has issued over 100,000 public cards since opening in 2001. Broward County public cardholders may access a number of online resources while in the library or offsite. Public cardholders, or those who have registered for an e-card, can access 205 databases while off-site and 503 databases while at the Sherman Library. If a Broward resident already has a Broward County public library card, he or she may register online for an e-card that grants access to some of the Sherman Library’s online resources. The e-card works as a temporary remote access solution. Once the resident visits the Sherman Library, a library card would be available upon filling out an application at the circulation desk.

Walk-in users can apply for an Alvin Sherman Library Card by filling out a form at the Circulation Desk and presenting identification, which verifies that they live, work, or go to school in Broward County. Nonresident visitors may request guest access to our online resources.

The Sherman Library’s comprehensive education collection was developed in close collaboration with the Abraham S. Fischler College of Education (FCE). In the late 1990s, FCE was located at NSU’s North Miami Beach (NMB) campus. A small library was opened there in 2001, consisting of books and periodicals. During those years, the Distance Library Services (DLS) department liaised with faculty and students at a distance, including those in FCE. In 2001, the Distance Library Services department became the Distance and Instructional Library Services department. Later, in 2014, Distance and Instructional Library Services and Reference departments merged and became the Reference and Instructional Library Services department (RILS). The RILS department is in charge, among other responsibilities, of providing outreach to several colleges at NSU. A number of librarians have served as a liaison to FCE. When faculty members make purchase recommendations to a liaison librarian, they take that request to a subject specialist for consideration.

While FCE was located in NMB, the NMB Library provided reference and circulation services as well as computers and printers for the Fischler faculty, staff, and local students. In 2017, after the relocation of FCE to NSU’s main campus in Davie, Florida, the core of the NMB collection was merged with the Sherman Library’s collection. Regardless of the location of FCE, the liaison librarian has continued to design library presentations and instructional materials for core courses; attend faculty, committee, and town hall meetings; and join faculty retreats, dissertation workshops, and Summer Institutes. The library liaison also serves as a channel to communicate purchase recommendations to the subject specialist, who is in charge of the collection development for Arts and Humanities. While the liaison to FCE monitors the changes in the curriculum, the subject specialist manages the budget and buys materials to support the current curriculum.

During a recent academic redesign certain courses were put on hold while others were discontinued. The liaison librarian communicated with the subject librarian about these changes and materials purchased were adjusted to reflect this change in curriculum.

As of December 2017, there were over 65,000 print titles in the Sherman Library call number range L-LT. For the purposes of this paper, we analyzed the Library of Congress call number range L-LT for education (Library of Congress, n.d.). However, FCE programs draw from other disciplines; therefore, this segment is not an exact reflection of the total number of titles available at Sherman Library to support the education curriculum. The library also subscribes to 60 education databases.

The majority of FCE students are online learners. According to NSU’s 2017 Fact Book, the total enrollment for FCE during the fall of 2016 was 3,667 students. Of them, 2,594 students were enrolled in online programs, while 239 students took blended courses where they take both online and in-person courses. The remaining 834 took face-to-face courses (S. Cowman, personal communication, December 14, 2017). FCE has distant cohorts spread out across the United States and several international sites in Colombia, Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Puerto Rico (Nova Southeaster University, 2017).

The above-described prevalence of online users is one of the reasons why electronic format is preferred over print for collection development. This supports not only FCE’s online programs but NSU’s mission “to offer a diverse array of innovative academic programs that complement on-campus educational opportunities and resources with accessible, distance-learning programs” (Office of Institutional Effectiveness, 2017).

The collection has been grown mainly with the effort of the collection development team, specifically the subject specialist who works collaboratively with FCE liaison librarian to purchase education material. The subject specialist may also purchase recommendations from both the academic community and the public. These are received through the Recommend a Purchase link on the library’s website and through FCE’s library liaison.

Public users may access our resources and services by going to the Sherman Library’s website at http://sherman.library.nova.edu. The Sherman Library offers specialized library training and information literacy sessions in which all library users are taught how to access the online catalog, databases, find peer-reviewed articles, and more. Library users can ask for help in a number of ways, including in-person meetings at a service point, by phone, or from online services such as chat and email. However, a public user may lack awareness regarding the breadth of the library’s collection in a subject be unfamiliar with the skills required to take advantage of the library resources.

The NSU Libraries’ mission is to “collaborate to be the premier research, cultural, and lifelong learning centers for NSU and the community” (Nova Southeastern University Libraries, 2008). As part of that mission to promote lifelong learning across NSU and the community, two librarians in the RILS department decided to analyze usage of the education collection and to reach out to a particular segment of our public user population in order to increase its use among Broward teachers. The team, made up by an education liaison librarian and a Subject Specialist for Arts and Humanities, decided to analyze the print and electronic education collection and promote its usage among the public. Selecting the Broward teachers as the target of this outreach was a strategic decision rooted in the relevance that this collection has for them.

A library resource of particular significance in the outreach efforts of the reference librarians is the Education LibGuide (http://nova.campusguides.com/education). Lib-Guides are websites created and maintained by librarians. They include links to library and nonlibrary resources for a particular subject. They are an asynchronous way that public users may learn about library resources and services, since they are accessible 24/7. Curated by the education liaison librarian, this resource includes recommended books on relevant subjects, recommended databases, and a list of resources for parent educators gathered by the subject specialist.

An emblematic resource in this library outreach project is the Teacher Resources website (http://public.library.nova.edu/teachers/). This webpage appeals to public school teachers by combining an attractive design with convenient links to library resources for particular subject areas.

This website was initially promoted during the 2016 Advanced Placement Summer Institute, an event cohosted by FCE and the College Board. In preparation for the Advanced Placement Summer Institute, the education liaison librarian contacted the library’s marketing department to design a promotional bookmark that would be included among the Advanced Placement Summer Institute attendees’ goodie bags. Along with the bookmark, attendees received a library card application with the goal of increasing the number of Broward teachers registered. The bookmark includes the URL of the Teacher Resources website and uses many of the same visuals found on the online resource.

The Teacher Resources webpage is conveniently laid out to appeal to teachers across a wide variety of disciplines, including science, technology, engineering, mathematics, language arts, current events, biographies, social studies, and a “general” section. The webpage is designed to be useful for teachers across all grade levels and it is openly accessible. These resources tend to be our electronic databases, which mainly features journal and reference articles.

Resources that maybe particularly valuable for public school teachers are Lynda.com, Gale Science in Context, Credo Reference Center, and USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive.

The library acquired Lynda.com in August 2017. The resource is available to NSU students, faculty, and staff, as well as NSU Alvin Sherman Library public cardholders. Lynda.com is a valuable resource that supports all members of the public in their pursuit of learning a new skill.

Lynda.com features a number of selfguided video tutorials covering a wide variety of topics (Lynda.com, n.d). From Photoshop, Cascading Style Sheets, and Python, to fine-tuning your grammar or learning an instrument, Lynda.com guides users on developing a skill via video tutorials and designated learning paths. There are 248 courses and 9,512 video tutorials on education and eLearning topics; 46 of them are focused on teacher professional development. Proprietary software is not included in Lynda.com but, for coding tutorials, an integrated development environment is provided so users can follow along and actually try out coding in real time.

Lynda.com is a valuable resource for teachers, who could use it in the classroom and to further their professional development. The over 12,000 videos in the Lynda.com library are a great source of content that a teacher could use to refresh material covered in class, flip the classroom, and make sure that the students have the required foundation on subjects such as information literacy or writing skills, just to name a few benefits.

Gale Science in Context and Credo Reference Center are both useful reference resources providing basic knowledge about topics in easy to understand language. Credo Reference Center is the better alternative to Wikipedia, with topic webs that help users visualize how a particular subject is related to other areas. These topic webs help users identify areas they may be interested in researching or writing about. Gale Science in Context is a visually appealing easy to browse database that includes academic articles, newspapers, videos, images, reference information, and more on a topic-landing page.

The USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive contains interviews from survivors and witnesses to the Holocaust and other genocides. This is a growing resource with over 52,000 video testimonials related to the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, the Guatemalan Genocide, the Nanjing Massacre, and the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda (USC Shoah Foundation, 2017). This resource is also helps support public school teachers to meet the Holocaust Education FS 1003.42 Required Holocaust Education Mandate Public School Instruction, which states that the Holocaust must be “taught in a manner that leads to an investigation of human behavior” (Fla. Stat. Title 48, § 1003.42(1)(g) (2017)).

Public users may access this database on-site, while off-site access is restricted to NSU students, faculty, and staff. This resource also supports part of a larger group of Holocaust resources and materials housed at the Sherman Library. The Craig and Barbara Weiner Holocaust Resource and Reflection Room opened in 2016. Initially it housed only books, artifacts, photographs, and films. In late 2017, the reflection room expanded to the Craig and Barbara Weiner Holocaust Resource and Reflection Center. The center includes monitors with running video testimonials from the USC Shoah Foundation, artifacts, and newspapers. Tours of the center are available to members of the public. The USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, along with the center, offer Florida public school teachers a chance to meet the Holocaust Education Mandate in a way that engages students with primary resource material from the time period.

Considering the large number of Broward County teachers among the library users, and the robust education collection developed with a focus on the education academic programs, the authors decided to support the Sherman Library initiative to reach out to Broward teachers, in order to make them aware of these resources. A simple and effective way of achieving this was to join several local teachers’ events and to advertise the Teacher Resources website through its bookmark. Two of those events were the Broward Teachers Union’s Steward Training and the BCPS/ BTU Annual New Teacher Orientation held in August 2017. Later that year, the reference librarians joined the Broward County Council of Teachers of Mathematics Annual Mathematics Extravaganza.

The authors either coordinated with the organizers to obtain a vendor booth or join FCE’s vendor table from where Teacher Resources bookmarks were distributed. Other promotional handouts relevant to their profession, such as Lynda.com and Shoah were also given out. A Sherman Library card application was always present in those experiences. Joining the events in person, instead of simply sending the promotional materials to be distributed, provided the authors with a chance to interact directly with Broward teachers, listen to their interests, and answer their registration or access questions.

The Broward teachers attending the latter event (FCE attends the Broward County, 2017) reacted with interest when they learned about the resources and services that a library card would bring to their world. Promoting the ASL in a shared table with FCE brought additional benefits from the enrollment point of view. Broward teachers who were inquiring about pursuing a master’s or doctoral degree were pleasantly surprised to know that the library provides a high level of research support to NSU students. While they consider their enrollment in the program, they can still enjoy the advantages of carrying an ASL card as public cardholders.

Plans for driving public user interest and use of our academic education collection include redesigning the Teacher Resources webpage to make it even more user-friendly and ensure that the content remains relevant. To do this, the RILS librarians working on this project have met with the web services librarian as well as librarians in the Public Library Services department.

The authors hope to add an Arts topic area, as well as an area for parent educators. They also wish to make some cosmetic changes to the design of the website and make sure it links properly to other resources, such as the Sherman Library’s Education LibGuide.

The authors would also welcome the opportunity to continue to promote this collection to members of the public, specifically among Broward county teachers. They hope to do so via events in conjunction with Sherman Library’s Public Library Services department, FCE, and the Broward Teachers Union.

This experience could be expanded to other groups; for example, parent educators, local organization programs such as the Parents as Teachers (http://www.arc-broward.com/parents-as-teachers) or the Home Educators program of the Broward County Public Schools (http://browardstu-dentservices.com/home-education/).

The authors would also like to further analyze the use of the print and online education collections and plan a cohesive approach to collection development in the area that responds to titles and subclasses usage. A study of the data already processed would highlight underrepresented subclasses with a high number of checkouts and vice versa. That could lead to a better understanding of who is using Sherman Library’s resources and what areas are particularly popular amongst patrons. The authors hope to use this information to make the collection more relevant to the Sherman Library public users.