2014 Charleston Library Conference

Digital textbooks, social media, video content. It seems as if instructors are moving everything into online and hybrid classrooms except for the resources of the library! How can librarians bring the world of quality databases, ebooks, and other digital resources from the library’s discovery system easily and directly into the online learning environment? This presentation will showcase how a plug-in for learning management systems (e.g., Moodle, Blackboard, Desire2Learn, Sakai, Canvas) adds unprecedented functionality for online course instructors: the ability to create reading lists of library materials without ever having to leave the course site. The plug-in allows instructors to create library reading lists without grappling with permalinks, proxy prefixes, or PDFs, leveraging the value of the library discovery system in a frictionless environment. This presentation will show how Santa Rosa Libraries collaborated with EBSCO to develop a tool that allows instructors to create reading lists embedded within Moodle. The reading list points to the library’s discovery system, EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS), allowing one-click full-text access for students. The tool also enables instructors to annotate reading list items and copy other reading lists created at Santa Rosa.

This presentation will discuss the reading list tool implementation at Santa Rosa, including:

• How educators can create and manage course reading lists right from the libraries’ Learning Management System (LMS).


• How the tool engages entities outside the library for development and promotion, while embedding the library in the university’s virtual community.


• How staff can view statistics, including which institutions’ courses and educators are using the tool and how many readings are included.

The Reading List plugin is an LTI Tool Provider 1.0, and is compatible with any learning management system that is LTI-compliant. The list of compliant LMS's includes Moodle, Blackboard, Canvas, and Desire2Learn. The tool was built using the discovery system’s API and the LTI protocol. Attend this presentation to see how the library is directly embedded in the online learning management system!

Academic libraries in the United States traditionally view students, faculty, and staff as their “primary clientele” – that is, the groups receiving the most attention from the library in terms of the resources and services. “Community users” is a category describing the collective status of local residents who seek the services of an academic library of an institution with which they are not affiliated. Like other user groups outside the “primary clientele,” policies for community users differ among institutional settings. Whether there is a direct correlation between adopting community service as an endeavor in institutional mission statements and providing open library services to community users remains to be fully studied in LIS literature.

This poster session will address this research question: how do libraries of institutions within the Associated Colleges of the South (ACS) consortium perceive community users, and how do library policies reflect these perceptions? A triangulation approach will examine data from two sources, institutional websites and an online survey of public service librarians, to resolve this question. The poster will present the preliminary findings from this study, including a literature review, a general overview of documents from institutional websites (institutional mission statements, library mission statements, and library policy documents pertaining to community users), survey questions, and preliminary results from the online survey. This poster session aims to fill a gap in LIS literature by examining small, private liberal arts institutions, a perspective largely absent in studies on this topic. The session will additionally invite audience members to share their experiences with community users and give feedback on the methodology of this study. The feedback will ultimately assist in the creation of a paper from this study, and further the ongoing discussion of community users, their information needs, and their means of access to information in academic libraries.