“Love Your Library Day” Photo by Linda Heimburger, CCTC

“Love Your Library Day” at Central Carolina Technical College

 

Submitted 3/12/08 by Linda Heimburger, CCTC

 

On February 14, 2008 Central Carolina Technical College hosted a Love Your Library day. PASCAL databases were featured via demos throughout the day. PASCAL bookmarks, pencils, and mousepads were distributed on a PASCAL display table. An in-house handout promoting PASCAL Delivers was also available. Library staff provided information and informal talks to students, faculty, and staff from all areas of campus. Several staff members were excited to learn about PASCAL Delivers as they are pursuing advanced degrees. Students were excited to learn they may request books themselves. Recently, a testimonial came from an Early Childhood Education student who said “ I love PASCAL Delivers. Between the CCTC library and books from campuses all over the state I was able to complete my review of 25 Caldecott medal books in a short period of time.”

"Say! That PASCAL is something else!"

Submitted 3/17/08 by Cathy Goodwin - Daytime Circulation Supervisor/ILL, Coastal Carolina University

Once our faculty discover the ease and speed of acquiring items through PASCAL Delivers, they quickly become repeat customers. Before Kimbel Library launched PASCAL Delivers in January 2007, we talked it up with several of our faculty who were heavy ILL users. One, a professor who had done graduate work in California university system, was certain that South Carolina academic libraries would not have the materials he needed, but quickly found that many of his requests come from our state's technical colleges. Another professor regularly searched Thomas Cooper's catalog for books he needed (Coastal used to be a USC branch campus), then submitted ILL requests for materials available there.  When he found he could search the PASCAL catalog to get USC's holdings and holdings of other schools, he became an enthusiastic convert. A new music faculty member was thrilled to discover that he could request musical scores through PASCAL, and is using it to help build his department's score collection.

Students are grateful for the convenience and availability of PASCAL Delivers also. While teaching an English 102 library session last year, I used our catalog to show students how to find short stories from different countries. Several students were doing Australia, and although our library had no collections of Australian short stories, I was able to show the students that they could click on the PD icon and voila! Fifteen titles for Australian short story collections. Since each student was following along on their own laptop (at least that was the idea) several students submitted PASCAL requests right then.  What a boon to be able to offer these materials to our students! Our borrowing statistics spiked the month that those projects were due, and we saw regional short story and poetry collections come in by the dozens.

At the end of our first full year of PASCAL Delivers, Coastal was the highest borrower of the 40 libraries that were actively lending in December 2007. (USC began lending in July of 2007, and has surpassed our borrowing in 2008). This is due, I hope, not to the quality of our collection, but the rigor with which library staff promote PASCAL. Our patrons hear about PASCAL in reference transactions, in library instruction, and at the circulation desk ("Sorry, that book is checked out, but you can request it through PASCAL.") Perhaps most importantly, our interlibrary loan specialist has taken on the task of checking each ILL book request in PASCAL before submitting the request to OCLC. If the book is readily available through PASCAL Delivers, the ILL request is cancelled, and the patron receives an email instructing them to request the book via PASCAL instead. This is perhaps our best "marketing," strategy, since it reaches the patron at the point of need.

One strength of the program is the support that participating libraries receive through the leadership of the PASCAL staff. Email queries are answered almost instantly, phone calls answered by a real person or returned within the day. Vic, Alis and Kathy (the folks with whom we on the "front lines" have the most contact) know the system thoroughly, and without their leadership, gentle reminders and cheerleading we would surely flounder. PASCAL Delivers makes our lives easier because we are able to offer our patrons options they did not have a year ago. We all agree - it is really "something else!"