Looking Back, Looking Ahead

Introduction

We often look forward to the new year; toward things we want to accomplish, trips we want to take, and, yes, even resolutions that will be redefined and eventually forgotten about after a few weeks. But January is not simply a month of projection and planning. Janus, the month’s namesake, is the ancient Roman god of beginnings and endings; of transitions, doorways, and passages. His double nature is reflected in illustrations of the god showing a face on the front and back of his head. Not surprisingly, in myth Janus was the first to mint coins, a perfect vehicle for the double faced deity. 

^{The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Picture Collection, The New York Public Library. "Bust of the Roman god Janus" New York Public Library Digital Collections.}

These reports, I suspect, would please Janus, with their summary of the previous semester’s worth of research, instruction, and user experience at the Gottesman Libraries while also providing a roadmap for the semester ahead. Dear reader, I hope that you too are pleased with the content provided herein, our Fall 2023 Reader Service report.  

Looking Back

Our reference and instruction services include workshops, classroom instruction, one-on-one consultations, and reference requests that come through our Ask a Librarian service. The Reference and Reader Services team creates research guides to support these services.

Research Guides

We have a guide for all programs at Teachers College and several general purpose guides that support all areas of scholarship independent of a specific discipline. In that latter group we added a new guide that collects information on how to locate resources to assist with funding for research projects. We also streamlined the consultation booking process by incorporating our appointment calendars directly into our research guides. 

Consultations

Consultations offer the Teachers College community, and affiliates, to talk one-on-one for up to an hour at a time with our reference and instruction librarians for in-depth research assistance. In Fall 2023 we offered 83 consultations to students, faculty, and alumni representing over 23 programs of study. Topics included information seeking for starting a grassroots library; gaming and its effect on trauma recovery; theories of black education in pre-integration school systems; refugee education practices in Brazil; Dungeons and Dragons and its application on literacy. 

Workshops

Our workshops are open to all members of the Teachers College community and our affiliate communities. They offer attendees opportunities to develop library research skills through a variety of specialized topics.

In Fall 2023 we offered 19 workshops, over a workshop a week over the course of the semester. We updated the content for the workshop on locating tools and resources for research funding to include the most current set of useful databases. One new workshop covering accessibility tools for research was added and will be included in our regular rotation of content offerings. There were 164 attendees, both virtual and in-person, for our workshop series. 

Information Sessions

Through our information sessions we offer onsite, virtual, or hybrid instruction to classes on a full range of tools available to them as students at Teachers College. These sessions can be customized based upon the instructor's need to focus on specific topics, issues, or resources.  

During the Fall 2023 semester we conducted 16 information sessions across 10 different academic departments for a total of 243 students. 

Service Tickets

 Library users can use the “Ask a Librarian” button on our website to submit questions for response. We answered 290 questions related to reference, instruction, and our workshops. 

Social Media

The Libraries continue to share our programming and interesting finds through our social media presence on Instagram. 

Access Services

At the Gottesman Libraries the purview of Access services includes circulation of physical resources; maintenance of the open bookstacks in the Russell Hall Tower; and the delivery of the highest level of customer service for the Libraries’ users at all our service points.

Open Collections

The Gottesman Libraries contains four floors of open stacks, each with its own mezzanine or loft level, where the Teachers College community can browse for books for reading onsite or to check out of the Library. In addition to the stacks, Library users can also browse for books on our second floor (children’s fiction, non-fiction, and teaching materials) and third floor (Teachers College Press, new faculty publications, and new research) reading rooms.

In Fall 2023, the Gottesman Libraries recorded 3421 physical items that circulated. This includes 1793 items that were checked out (not-in-house loans) and 1,628 items that circulated within the Library (in-house loans). Our Library Associates paged 419 items from the stacks on behalf of our users. Finally, 2,788 items were returned to the Libraries.     

User Experience

The Gottesman Libraries is open 89 hours during a typical week, extended hours of operation during finals sees the Libraries open over 100 hours. This would not be possible without our Library Associates who act as the first point of contact with our users, answering questions at the Service Desk, through our chat service, and by telephone. They bring a range of experience and backgrounds but all have a strong commitment to serving the Teachers College community. During Fall 2023 they responded to 1760 questions at the service desk, conducted 154 chat interactions, and answered 203 phone calls.

We maintain a partnership with the New York Public Library to sign TC users up for NYPL library cards. They are able to fill out a registration form at our Service Desk and will be notified to pick up their library card within a few days. We believe that having access to the wealth of resources afforded by our public library system achieves our goal of developing informed and engaged leaders. This semester we issued 26 NYPL cards. 

Service Tickets

Finally, we responded to 79 questions related to circulation and access this past semester.

Looking Ahead

In the Spring 2024 semester will be the semester of the literature review. Based upon our assessments, we see that this particular research output is where our services can be of greatest support to our users. We will offer workshops on conducting systematic literature reviews along with content on using popular software for screening articles and collaboration. We also plan to review bibliometrics and altmetrics for analyzing journals and authors; provide an overview of EndNote, a reference management tool that our users have told us they want to know more about. The TC community can also expect to see more content being produced for our research guides, including more incorporation of video media.