It’s not a library; it’s a Library Learning Commons

A technological transformation is taking place at the campus library that ranges from expanding its digital databases to initiating popular Alexa personal assistants to help students.

Even the Nancy Thompson Library Learning Commons reflects another big change with the relocation of academic support services in one place at the library. These services now include the Writing Center, the Speech Lab, tutoring and other services.

Mark Sapara, director of learning support services; Angela Zeitz, managing assistant director for the Writing Center; and Muhammad Hassan, director of digital information services, explained this and more at an October meeting of the University Senate, the elected body of faculty and administrators that recommend policy and procedures at Kean.

“We are looking at what we are doing in terms of the Writing Center, tutoring, speech lab and other initiatives that we have to support student learning, and that’s both online and in person,” Sapara said at the meeting.

Sapara wanted individuals at the meeting to understand that the new commons is in the process of executing several projects to benefit Kean.

One project librarians are engaging is designed to understand how library services are impacting the retention goals of the university.

“We are asking how many times students come in, what are they coming in for and how do those visits impact persistence and their graduation rate,” said Sapara.

The library is also coordinating supplemental instruction in partnership with the Office of Student Retention to work on courses with high failure rates.

“[Some] courses like chemistry 1083 had one of the highest [failure rates], so we have student supplemental leaders that sit with professors and run supplemental groups to be more interactive,” Sapara said.

At the Writing Center, Zeitz said the center is working to help students who need support.

“Previously we were not working in retention and we were not working with students who may have been suspected of plagiarism,” she said. “So all of those things we’re changing for those students who need our support the most.”

In digital, Hassan said that the Library Learning Commons website has almost 1,000 users everyday. Kean has research guides that are available for almost all subject matters, 7 million books, 251 databases and 221 million full text journals are available to students and staff.

“We want students, faculty and staff to use this information to develop and help other students,” he said.

Hassan stressed that the Kean community could come to them with any issues, questions and concerns regarding digital advancements and accommodations for students.

The biggest project, though, has been reading and culling the collection in the library commons. This regular process had not been done in a long time according to Sapara.

“Reading and culling is something that happens on a regular basis, every year as you shape your collection,” Sapara said. “What you have, what you need, what is our motive, any issues related to accreditation and if our collection reflects all those things.”

Over the summer, Sapara and his team contacted departments for materials that they no longer needed, were duplicates or were already digital pieces in their collection. It was an operation that allowed executive directors and deans to look over and take the material that was essential for their departments.

“Now we are moving into the larger name collection where the librarians are working directly with faculty and reviewing materials,” said Sapara. “[This is] to make sure that we have what the students need and matching that with what we have digitally, which we spent a lot of money on for those resources.”

Dr. Paul Croft, associate vice president in the Office of the Vice President of Academic Affairs, echoing the president, was adamant about facilitating new academic tools for the Kean community.

Dr. Croft said Kean has more than 700,000 electronic titles available that the university pays for, and are accessible through the Kean website.

In comparison, the second and third floor of the library houses about 180,000 physical books and about 3,000 to 4,000 of the books are checked out.

“With the physical collection, faculty use it for their courses and they show up in the reading reserve room for students to checkout and use,” Dr. Croft said. “…From the numbers it’s clear the preference is the electronic compared to the physical, but the physical still remains.”

The term “to get rid of” has been one that has sparked rumors of books being discarded, an assumption that Croft wished to dispel.

“I think some people tend to believe that the President Dawood Farahi doesn’t want any physical books at all and it’s not true,” Croft said. “When people ask what can be done about the books President Farahi always responds with, ‘We’ll buy another one.’ …why would we throw out a costly collection? Why wouldn’t we just look at our collection and take out the lesser relevant collections?”

Besides print books, Croft spoke of Dr. Farahi’s movement to get away from textbooks to help students save money through open educational resources online.

“There are ways to get the instructional materials to students — sometimes physical, sometimes electronic. We can do both,” Croft said.

Gabriel Ertsgaard, an English lecturer, said he has many opinions about the value of books and their impact in modern higher education settings.

“I think we still have the issue of figuring out what the place is of older technology when newer technology comes along and figuring out what the best tool for the job is,” Ertsgaard said.

Professor Ertsgaard said the point is not throwing out old technology (books), but instead it’s rather knowing what source to use and how to use it.

He criticized the Kean Federation of Teachers for a KFT email to faculty, which he said: “the gist of it was red alert, secret plot to remove all the books from the library. The next email from an upward administration official read,‘ the rumors that there is a secret plot to remove the books from the library is a lie.’”

He said he later figured out that there has been “a long-standing friction” among the faculty union, tenured faculty and the administration.

“Unfortunately, whenever you have a long-standing conflict you start to interpret everything the other side does with suspicion,” the professor said.