Academic Senate for California Community Colleges (ASCCC) | Council of Chief Librarians

Academic Senate for California Community Colleges (ASCCC) — Dan Crump

Online Education Initiative (OEI) www.ccconlineed.org

Report by Dan Crump, American River College, OEI Steering Committee

Thanks to Morgan Brynnan and Glorian Sipman for providing information about online librarian reference services (possible suggestions included OCLC Questionpoint and Libraryh3lp) to be considered for inclusion in the OEI system. As Morgan noted in her email to me, “Reference librarian and library services are essential for student success, and many studies show a direct correlation between the two: Library Use, Information Literacy and Student Success Research Review: http://wikis.ala.org/acrl/index.php/CCSSE_Information_Literacy_Items.”

I will bring this forward to both the Basic Skills and the Academic Affairs workgroups of the OEI for discussion. They have been looking at online tutorial services, but maybe we can also look at online reference services. We are one step ahead of some many other groups in that we do offer a range of online database sources (including Academic Search Premier, Business Source, Health Source, MasterFile, and Newspaper Source) available to all CCC libraries through the Community College Library Consortium.

In addition, I am on the Basic Skills workgroup with the charge to “identify and address the needs of Basic Skills students, faculty, Chancellor’s Office and instructional support staff by developing effective strategies in this area.” One of our initial assignments is to identify online resources that would be appropriate and we are gathering examples (with URLs) of resources that provide free and/or low cost mathematics, English reading/writing, ESL and library research modules, tutorials, and/or support. Thanks to all the librarians who responded to my email request for examples.