2.9 Learning Resources

The institution, through ownership or formal arrangements or agreements, provides and supports student and Faculty access and user privileges to adequate library collections as well as to other learning/information resources consistent with the degrees offered. These collections and resources are sufficient to support all its educational, research, and public service programs. (Learning Resources and Services)

St. Petersburg College is in compliance with this requirement because its outstanding library collections and learning/information resources are consistent with the degrees offered at SPC.

The SPC Libraries through direct ownership and formal agreements provide comprehensive resources and services in support of the College Mission to provide accessible, learner-centered education.

St. Petersburg College has libraries on six campuses: Clearwater, Tarpon Springs, St. Petersburg/Gibbs, Seminole, Health Education Center, and Allstate. In addition, the College has developed some unique library partnerships in order to serve the community as well as the College. The Seminole Campus library is a joint use library with the City of Seminole, the Dennis L. Jones Community Library. The St. Petersburg/Gibbs campus library is a joint use library with the City of St. Petersburg, the West St. Petersburg Community Library.

According to the College Center for Library Automation (CCLA), in 2005/06 the SPC library was ranked first in circulation of materials of the 28 community colleges in Florida with a circulation of 587,683 and second in collection size (343,594 items plus approximately 43,000 in the St. Petersburg West Community Public Library system). The libraries have extensive physical collections of books, periodicals, audio visual materials and a wide array of online resources selected to support the programs of the college and the curriculum. The library also has a collection of over 57,000 books that can be used electronically (the largest in the state of Florida) and licenses a growing collection of downloadable audio books and music. It has approximately 2,459 serial and periodical subscriptions, over 24,362 audiovisual titles, and 76 electronic research databases with over 25,000 individual titles and nearly a million full-text articles.

Access all library collections, including scholarly journals, is provided through Library Online, a subset of the College’s Web site that serves as a portal to library resources and services.

Currently, students and Faculty are provided passwords to use licensed materials; however, the libraries are exploring a more seamless method of authenticating patrons such as EZ-Proxy. Physical collections are housed on every campus and are selected through an award winning collection development policy to reflect the curriculum of that campus. For example, the Caruth Health Education Center Library collection is tightly focused on allied health and medical research and study. The Collection Development Policy is reviewed regularly and new sections are added as needed to meet the needs of the curriculum. Recent additions include sections on Baccalaureate Collections and Curriculum Library Materials.

The library’s collection policy is to provide the same level of library services and resources both physically and electronically; however, in recognition of Seminole’s focus on E-Campus, this site relies more heavily on electronic resources which are supplemented by the physical collection at the Seminole Community Library. Library services are currently provided by the Seminole Information Services Librarian who consults with faculty to provide face-to-face and online research assistance to Seminole and E-campus students. Plans are underway to augment College library staffing including some part-time evening and weekend research and library instruction assistance. Additional physical materials and space to co-locate the College’s collections are also under investigation.

At the new Downtown and Midtown centers, there are currently no physical collections on site; however students have access to the library collections and services at the West Community Library on the (SPC) St. Petersburg/Gibbs campus which serves as the home library for both centers and offers interlibrary loan, reference assistance, and library instruction in addition to its collections. Students also have borrowing privileges at the Poynter Library at the University of South Florida - St. Petersburg located a few blocks away in downtown St. Petersburg. In addition, an SPC librarian is available on site several hours per week to assist students and faculty with research assignments. Library services are provided in a similar outreach fashion at the Allstate Center.

At the EpiCenter, which now houses three baccalaureate programs, there is a small resource library as well as easy access to Clearwater campus library and Library Online. In addition, two of the baccalaureate librarians have offices in an adjacent building and are very proactive in providing assistance and resources to the academic programs. As these new centers continue to grow in enrollment and program offerings, it will be critical for the library to revisit staffing levels in order to provide the requisite library services.

As mentioned earlier, the library Web site is the point of access for electronic resources and services. For example, the section on Baccalaureate programs leads students and Faculty to Web pages and Web “commons” specific to those programs including resources, services and tutorials. Baccalaureate Program Library Services support the 16 Bachelor degree programs including: Dental Hygiene, Education (Elementary, Exceptional, Secondary Math, Secondary Biology, Technology Education, and Business Technology Ed. & Industrial Arts certificate), International Business, Nursing, Orthotics and Prosthetics, Law & Paralegal Studies, Public Safety Administration, Technology Management and Veterinary Technology in addition to upcoming programs such as the new Banking degree.

As with the two year curricula, library support for these programs includes development of research collections of books, peer-reviewed journals, audio-visual materials, periodicals, online research databases, e-journals and Web tools. Two full-time librarians and one half-time librarian are assigned to baccalaureate program development. They work closely with Faculty, administration and students to identify services that enhance support of instructional needs such as academic tutorials, library research instructions (traditional and online), Reserves and E-Reserves, and reference and informational services. The addition of baccalaureate majors in fields for which SPC has related A.S. degrees, e.g., Nursing, Paralegal Services, and Public Safety, has greatly enhanced the library resources for the students in those A.S. programs.

The library Faculty strive to ready graduates with information literacy skills that will help them with professional growth and competency. Detailed information on library instruction can be found in 3.8.2.

The online collection of electronic books now exceeds 57,000 titles. The library subscribes to 76 databases or aggregates of databases. Examples of such subscriptions to support the curriculum are OVID Essential Nursing Journals for nursing and allied health programs, Business Source Premier for programs in business, economics, and banking, and JSTOR for scholarly periodical backfiles in multiple curricular areas. Each library provides state-of-the-art open use student computers and layouts that encourage collaborative learning and group study. Two of the libraries, Health Education and Tarpon Springs, include tutorial services within the library. Each library provides wireless access and loans wireless computers to students for use in the libraries.

The library participates in a number of cooperative agreements and consortia to provide enhanced access to library resources. The library was a pioneer in reciprocal borrowing agreements and has these agreements with all public libraries in Pinellas County and those in a ten-county consortial region (Tampa Bay Library Consortium). The library has special arrangements with Stetson Law Library to provide resources for Law & Paralegal Studies students and has reciprocal borrowing agreements with all community college and university libraries in Florida. The library also has reciprocal borrowing agreements with private institutions who participate in the University Partnership Center such as Barry University and St. Leo University. The new Downtown Center has an arrangement with the University of South Florida at St. Petersburg to provide our students access to their library. SPC belongs to the Southeastern Library Network (SOLINET), a regional and national library network whose goals are to improve access to information and enable members to effectively anticipate and address the region’s needs for education and economic development. SPC not only benefits by its membership in the consortium, but is a regular contributor to the SOLINET. These agreements and cooperative arrangements are reviewed on a regular basis.

The library automation and library management system used by St. Petersburg College is provided by the College Center for Library Automation (CCLA), a state agency, which also provides access to the online catalogs of the other 27 community colleges. CCLA provides a Web gateway for a number of electronic databases that are jointly licensed by the community college libraries. The Florida Electronic Library provided by the State Library of Florida provides additional resources such as “ASK A Librarian” (chat reference service) and additional databases provided for all citizens of Florida. The Library Online links to these services.

The Library Online system is well used. On the most recent annual Enrolled Student Survey, 86% of students answering the survey use the Library services. Data collected on Web site visits shows over 10,000 unique visitors in Fall and Spring terms.

Month	Unique visitors	Number of visits	Pages	Hits	Bandwidth
Jan 2006	9928	24540	54934	534840	2.40 GB
Feb 2006	10594	27393	57999	592295	2.45 GB
Mar 2006	10797	25204	50892	532582	2.29 GB
Apr 2006	10328	24836	48293	502325	2.08 GB
May 2006	8244	17096	32261	362381	1.77 GB
Jun 2006	7743	19178	38317	418306	2.85 GB
Jul 2006	6474	14225	27173	297549	2.07 GB
Aug 2006	8887	18810	40903	410984	2.81 GB
Sep 2006	11255	28362	62566	647079	4.58 GB
Oct 2006	11588	27543	55046	630686	4.10 GB
Nov 2006	11761	27252	52141	605839	3.83 GB
Dec 2006	6999	13465	25001	278218	2.23 GB
Total	114598	267904	545526	5813084	33.46 GB

On the most recent annual Enrolled Student Survey, the Library received the second-highest level of student satisfaction of any of the services provided by the college, 6.18 on a 7-point Likert scale. Student satisfaction with the SPC libraries has steadily risen over the last four years:

In addition, the rating of satisfaction with the libraries’ reference services on the 2006/07 survey was 8.56 on a 10-point scale and 95% student responded positively when asked if the library was helpful to them academically.

The Library staff works closely with new programs to develop a comprehensive collection of resources to support each program. A focus group of Program Directors that met in Fall 2005 considered the collections to be current and relevant to their programs and commended the SPC library staff for the effort they make to ensure library resources meet the needs of all programs. No deficiencies in collection adequacy were noted by the Program Directors. Two focus groups were held at the Seminole campus in Fall 2006 to survey faculty and students on library needs and improvements at that library, which is a joint use facility with the city of Seminole. Work is under way to implement many of the recommendations including undertaking a collection analysis, adding additional materials and consolidating college collections to better support the college curricula, convening a faculty advisory task force and adding additional librarian hours for reference assistance and library instruction. In addition the Seminole Community Library will be jointly administered by the city and the college Director of Libraries to ensure that the facility meets the educational needs of the college community.

The College provides learning support for students through a variety of information commons, learning resource centers and specialized tutoring services such as the New Initiative Project (NIP) at the Carruth Allied Health Center.

In support of the College’s mission to “provide accessible, learner-centered education” and the College’s goal “to enhance student learning,” the College provides facilities for student learning support on six campuses or centers. The learning resource centers, known by different names at various campuses: Learning Support Centers, Information Commons, Learning Commons/Collaborative Commons or New Initiative Program, supplement and enrich the existing programs at the College. The Learning Support Centers accomplish their mission by providing:

§ Alternative learning strategies through audio-visual, tutorial, individualized, self-paced, one-on-one tutorial and computer-assisted work.

Learning support services are provided in numerous subject areas, depending on the needs of a particular campus’ demographics, as determined through student and faculty requests and surveys, and can include face-to-face tutoring in reading, mathematics, English, foreign language, and other subjects; as well as computerized and audio-visual learning resources.

Availability of academic support. Learning Support Centers are located at each campus and selected centers. The following is a summary of the Learning Support Centers on each campus:

Inter-campus coordination ensures that some Learning Support Centers/Information Commons are open on Saturday and some on Sunday.

Face-to-face academic support. All LSCs have an open general area for computer use and tutoring as well as separate study rooms. Some LSCs have separate math classrooms, reading classrooms, and ESL classroom used for tutoring when classes are not in session. The LSCs also provide textbooks, calculators, and interactive math CDs for the tutors and the students to utilize while in the LSC.

A significant amount of face-to-face tutoring is available on each main campus six days of the week throughout the semester. An example from a smaller campus, Tarpon Springs, shows that tutoring is available in math, writing, Spanish, and computers until 8:30 at night Monday through Thursday and during the day on Fridays and Sundays.

Numerous online tutorials are provided on each campus. Seminole, for example, offers a page on their information commons site with the following tutorials:

Online Tutorials
Ø	APA and MLA	Ø	Scanning Instructions
Ø	Assignment Calculator	Ø	Sound Forge
Ø	Database Tutorials	Ø	Visual Thesaurus
Ø	eCampus & ANGEL	Ø	MyDropBox
Ø	How to Email Attachments	Ø	PDF Files & Adobe Acrobat Reader
Ø	How to Research on the Internet	Ø	MS Excel
Ø	How to Use the College Printers	Ø	MS Power Point
Ø	How to Use the Internet	Ø	MS Word

SPC students also use the computers in the LSC to access the online tutorials from SmartThinking, Academic.com, Interactive Math, and the Adventuras Spanish software. SmartThinking is a hybrid tutoring service that provides online private tutoring sessions as well as study materials and practice assessments.

Other LSC activity. Students come to the LSCs for reasons other than face-to-face tutoring services and computer tutorials. These other reasons include: studying, group work; word processing, printing and copying, checking email, completing online assignments, and researching information on the Internet. Some LSCs also provide a suitable space and proctoring for make-up testing.

Staffing. To fulfill the stated mission, tutoring is provided by full-time LSC instructional staff, federal work study student tutors, departmental student tutors, and qualified community volunteers. Students may work as peer tutors if they are registered for a minimum of 6 credit hours. Faculty recommendations, overall GPA, subject matter proficiency, and effective communication skills are considered when interviewing students for tutoring positions. Volunteer tutors register with the SPC Special Services Department, complete an LSC tutor application, and are interviewed to determine subject area proficiency and effective communication skills. During the interviewing process tutor guidelines are discussed and distributed. LSC staff members attend various training workshops, in-service days, departmental meetings, collaborative sessions, software demonstrations, and other professional presentations.

Collaborative Commons. The Seminole campus has developed an innovative approach to computer labs, providing two types: a learning commons and a collaborative commons. In the learning commons the emphasis is on individual work, while the collaborative commons’ emphasis is on group work.

New Initiative Program Learning Support Center. The New Initiative Program (NIP) is a federally funded program designed to provide academic assistance to special population health and pre-health students. NIP is provided as a service of SPC at the Health Education Center. Depending on need, students may receive assistance in such areas as math, English, science, and college survival skills: test taking strategies, time management, stress reduction, and general study skills. The Learning Support Center, sponsored by NIP, provides a hands-on learning environment for all students. The Health Education Center Library and NIP share space, representing the academic hub of the Health Education Center. Librarians and the NIP staff work closely through a cross referral process to ensure that every opportunity is available to students to achieve academic success. When a librarian perceives a need for academic support, a personal introduction is made by that librarian to the NIP coordinator. In turn, tutors introduce students to individual librarians to ensure that informational needs are meet.

Business Technologies Information Commons. The Business Technologies department computer labs are used for teaching computer courses in computer programming, applications, systems, and networks. These labs are used for classes scheduled in the daytime, evening, and weekends. The number of computers varies from 16 to 32, with most labs having 20 or 24 student computer stations. The hardware and software in each lab is appropriate for the instructional needs of the courses being taught in that lab, with some software common to all labs. During non-class times, the labs are also used by instructors to provide additional instructional assistance to students on a small group or one-to-one basis outside of class. When not in use for student instruction, these labs may be scheduled for college training needs such as Staff and Program Development computer applications training (e.g., Microsoft Office, student information system, strategic planning software) and other special training needs for Faculty and staff.

Tracking student use of Learning Support Centers, campus advising, and career development services. In its efforts towards continuous improvement, St. Petersburg College recently procured and implemented a software program, Who’s Next, for tracking counseling, tutoring, career advising, and other student academic support services. Who’s next allows SPC to monitor student academic support at the student level, campus, and institution-wide and includes the capability to monitor waiting times, peak periods, and requests for various services.

For example, when students enter the LSC, they log in at a computer kiosk on Who’s Next, which gathers information on the number of visits to the LSC, the services being used, and the length of a visit. When students are exiting the LSC, a staff member logs them out.

Evaluating quality and effectiveness. On the annual Enrolled Student Survey, student satisfaction with academic support services such as the Learning Support Centers has exceeded the Collegewide goal of 5.0 (on a 7-point Likert scale). Student satisfaction with academic program/educational support has risen over the last four years from a rating of 5.46 to a rating of 5.69:

62% of students answering the Enrolled Student Survey use the academic program/educational support services. One student commented on the survey, “I feel that SPC provides all the resources needed to succeed. All anyone has to do is use them.”

Each campus Learning Support Center continuously works towards improving student satisfaction. On the Clearwater campus, for example, academic tutoring by student tutors was expanded from all levels of math, English, and reading, to include Spanish, physics, chemistry, accounting, French, computer programming, computer operating systems, and Microsoft Office. The St. Petersburg/Gibbs campus uses information on daily and weekly numbers of students using the Learning Support Center and students’ reasons for coming. As a result, the Learning Support Center has organized the LSC to optimize a variety of student uses and has acquired tutorial software for math, reading, English, foreign language, biology and other subjects to supplement and enhance student learning experiences. Student satisfaction on its internal survey has been over 90% rating satisfactory and above:

In a 2005 focus group, Program Directors confirmed the adequacy and relevancy of learning support services, citing numerous services that they considered best practices, including the orientations SPC offers for online classes, final exam reviews, particularly math tutoring preparation for finals, the New Initiative Program for health education tutoring, and the College of Education Student Commons. A sample screen shot from the College of Education Student Commons shows a comprehensive and centralized space for information, resources, and online discussions.

“The Commons is an innovative and incredibly useful tool for our student teachers that Greg [the Instructional Technologist who created the site] has nurtured from the start. You can see the variety of resources available, but the Table of Contents only hints at the depth of information.”