Author: Maryanne Mills

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Technology Lending Program update

Last October I reviewed the exciting news on this blog that our library was awarded grant funds to create a Technology Lending Program.  Since then we’ve purchased the cameras and equipment,  and cataloged and organized all the pieces. Thanks to our film instructor W. Clay for his help in recommending all the equipment. Kudos also go out to Patty Wong’s Grant Writing course at San Jose State’s iSchool which helped me to write the application. Now comes the hard part: Writing the the policies and procedures, asking our beta testers to give us feedback, testing the process, and then repeating the process until we get it right.  Luckily, we have some examples of other colleges who’ve been through the process and we are happy to give them credit here. Portland Community College’s Technology for Checkout program was a great motivator. LibGuides from Claremont Colleges was very extensive and set the bar for us.  Last but definitely not least,  and where the ultimate bar was set is the NCSU Libraries’ Technology Lending Program.

I’ll be spending most of August working on the policies. Luckily I found this fabulous book  by Sander, Mestre and Kurt published in 2015:

book cover of Going Beyond Loaning Books to Loaning Technologies

Stay tuned!

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Reaching beyond the campus: Part II

banner for Exhibit on Thinking Money
ALA’s Thinking Money Exhibit Banner

This is a brief follow-up to my post in December on my college library’s collaboration with the local public library on the Thinking Money exhibit. The exhibit ended in April and as a first-time collaborative project, I think it went pretty well. The college library acted as the go-between in setting up a college financial aid workshop at the public library for local high school students.  The college library created a “matching exhibit” on financial literacy for our students with handouts and flyers for related workshops and books at the public library. While the public library’s emphasis was on junior high and high school students, we made sure that we had offerings specifically for young adults/college students.  This was a first step in collaborating with the local public library and we are looking forward to more opportunities where we can build on our mutual strengths.