Coastline Faculty, Welcome to the Virtual Library Online Orientation.   We've set a goal to have 75% of Coastline faculty oriented to the Virtual Library by December 31, 2003.  Thank you for  taking the time to learn more about how the Virtual Library can help you and your students!  And for helping us achieve our goal. When you have finished the Orientation, please complete and submit the form at the bottom of the page.  We will use this information in reports on Title III compliance, developing faculty resources, and evaluating the orientation program. Cheryl Stewart, Librarian

For its first 25 years, Coastline Community College did not have its own library.  Because Coastline was conceived as an innovative distance learning institution "without walls," there was only one way to provide library support:  students were referred to local academic or public libraries.

As methods for remote delivery of education developed, the need for a community college level library that would serve both local and remote students became more pressing.

In 1998,  Coastline made a commitment to build an entirely electronic, online, virtual library using the innovations made possible by the Internet and the World Wide Web.  The Virtual Library would provide the same services and resources available in a traditional library, and more.

Funding for the library project came primarily from a state-funded Telecommunications and Technology Infrastructure Program (TTIP) grant.
The state's commitment to developing electronic library services coincided exactly with Coastline's commitment to develop a virtual library.

Within two years, the Academic Senate voted to create a full time faculty position for a librarian, and committed its members to fully support the new library.
 

What can the Virtual Library do for you?
 

YOU	YOUR STUDENTS
Keep up to date with research and developments in your field.	Access to a wide variety of information sources.
Find interesting articles to share with colleagues and students.	Opportunities to develop information competencies.
24/7 access to research and information resources.	24/7 access to research and information resources.
Enables you to expand your syllabus to include timely, interesting research assignments that spark students' interest in the field.	Provide your students with free supplemental readings.
It can save you money!  By taking advantage of the books, periodicals, newspapers, reference resources, and multimedia databases, you could conceivably save hundreds of dollars.	Reduce dependence upon expensive textbooks.
Everything a traditional library can do and more.	Everything a traditional library can do and more.

What is a Virtual Library Anyway?

"Virtual" is the term used to characterize an electronic representation that attempts to replicate or mimic a physical item or environment.  "Virtual Reality" mimics or replicates elements from the physical world and blurs the distinctions between the artificial and the physical for end users.  Virtual reality has many uses, for example, bloodless dissections, architectural modelling, and crime scene recreations.  The Virtual Library is simply an electronic online version of the traditional physical library.

In the virtual environment, the librarian is not always reminding you to be quiet, there are no bathrooms, and resources are easily accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

By the same token, the librarian may not be immediately available to assist when help is needed, not everything ever published is available in digital format, and Internet service can be less than stellar.

Virtual libraries will not replace traditional libraries.   Each type of library will provide the access, services, resources, and environmental amenities for which it is best suited.  At Coastline, because so many of our students are distance learners and because the world is our campus, we need a virtual library that enables us to provide a full range of academic resources and services to our students and faculty with no matter where they are located or when they need them.
 

A Quick Tour of the Library Home Page
 

Online Subscription Databases

The online subscription databases provide us with the digitized journals, books, newspapers, and other resources that comprise most of the Coastline Virtual Library collection.  The companies, our vendors,  that create the databases make arrangements with publishers for the right to digitize and subscribe the formerly print materials.  We pay a subscription fee, usually based on FTES,  to the vendors for the right to access the materials, and to use them as proscribed by the rules of "Fair Use" for education purposes.

Access is free for students, faculty, staff, and administration as long as copyright is honored and fair use limitations are observed.

Finding magazine or journal articles in the online databases requires new research skills.  In the past, you probably learned to use the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature and any number of other indexes to help you find relevant articles for your research.  Along the way you learned, without being taught, the principles of subject heading searching.  You also learned to be flexible and creative in your approach to finding the proper terminology that would help you find as many useful documents as possible.  Usually the indexes, directories, and other finding tools provided clues to point you in the right direction if your terminology was leading you astray.

The same principles apply in online searching, but electronic databases expand searching options so that it is easier and faster to get many results (recall), but trickier to get appropriate, useful results (relevance).

Fortunately, the vendors are in competition with each other for our business and so they are motivated to develop products that have built in tools, tips, helps, guides, and resources for student researchers.  They are also motivated to design easy to navigate, user-friendly, productive interfaces for their products.

Unfortunately, each vendor attempts to be unique and standout from the crowd.  Each product uses different terminology for the same features.  The underlying searching protocols in each product tend to be unique, requiring the user to learn each product's idiosyncracies; for example,
 
 

Vendor Name	Simple Keyword Search	Structured Keyword Search	Basic Search Limiters
ProQuest	"Basic Search" Searches string as a phrase	"Advanced Search" Searches 16 database fields	2 database options 3 date range options Peer review option
EBSCOhost	"Basic Search" Assumes OR between words	"Advanced Search" Searches 10 database fields	2 expander options 4 limiter options
SIRS Knowledge Source	"Quick Search" Searches words in "Subject Heading" field	"Advanced Search" Searches 3 database fields	None

Our subscriptions have been carefully selected to provide resources appropriate for our students and the curriculum they undertake at Coastline.   Each product is discussed below.  You will see that there is some overlap between the products, but they have been selected to provide a range of titles, material, reading levels, and searching features so that our students can fulfill the requirements of course assignments while experiencing a range of electronic media formats and search protocols.

By exposing your students to the Virtual Library collection, you aid them in developing essential information competency skills and knowledge.

• State a research question, problem, or issue.
• Determine information requirements in various disciplines for the research questions, problems, or issues.
• Use information technology tools to locate and retrieve relevant information.
• Organize information.
• Analyze and evaluate information.
• Communicate using a variety of information technologies.
• Understand the ethical and legal issues surrounding information and information technology.
• Apply the skills gained in information competency to enable lifelong learning.

• Assignment 1:  Formulate a topic sentence for a brief 2 to 5 page report or research paper. 

• Developing a good topic sentence is difficult.  Human nature predisposes us to start with a broad subject.  
• Students need opportunities to ponder the broad subject and find aspects of it that interest them, that lend themselves to research, that might interest a reader, and for which there are sources of relevant information that can be searched. 
  
• "Tobacco Addiction" becomes "Why Teens Smoke" or "Why Some People Cannot Quit Smoking."
• "Sharks" becomes "What Surfers Need to Know to Avoid Being Sharkbait" or "Why Sharks Don't Sleep"
• "History of California" becomes "Ranchos of Old Orange County" or "How Hawaiian Gardens Got Its Name"

• Assignment 2:  Evaluate one of the following Web sites and explain why you would or would not recommend it to another student.

• Students are supplied with a list of  5 to 10 URLs for Web sites pertaining to your discipline and with guidelines for evaluating Web sites.
• Give students a forum for sharing their evaluations.

• Assignment 3:  Find and recommend an excellent Web site pertaining to course subject matter.

• Supply students with guidelines for evaluating Web sites and an assortment of topics.
• Give students a forum for sharing their recommendations.
  

• Assignment 4:  Read and review a book pertaining to course subject matter.

• Give students a list of titles from the Coastline Virtual Library and guidelines for finding electronic books in the library.
• Have them submit a paragraph or two regarding the book.

• Assignment 5:  Find and read the following article in the Virtual Library, ____________________________________.

• Give students the citation for an article from one of the online databases and guidelines for finding articles in the library.
• Have them submit a paragraph or two regarding the article.

• Assignment 6:  Complete  class assignment _________________________ located in the "Tutorials and Library Instruction" section of the Virtual Library.

• The librarian will work with the instructor to create a variety of class assignments to which students may be directed. 
  
• Students complete an assignment on their own and submit evidence of completion either on paper or electronically.

• Assignment 7:  Collect meaningful, relevant quotations from at least five sources.  Use the 3"x 5" card method outlined in the handout.

• Provide students with a list of possible topics and guidelines for one approach to notetaking.
• Review the cards
  
• Give students a forum for sharing and discussing the quotations.

• Assignment 8:  Read an article from the most recent issue of one of the periodicals listed below, and write a paragraph highlighting the article's most imporant points.  Be prepared to share your comments during class discussion.

• Provide students with a list of discipline-specific periodicals from one or more of the electronic databases.  Be sure that the periodicals' articles are available in full text.
• Provide students with guidelines for finding periodicals by publication date.
• Give students a forum for sharing and/or discussing the periodicals they explored.