TRC library focuses on academic, course supplemental materials

The Three Rivers College library system is seeing results after a shift in focus to match course offerings.

Student satisfaction in the Three Rivers College library has increased over the last few years. Of fall 2019 graduates who completed their graduation survey, 100% rate the library as “satisfied” or “very satisfied” compared to 97% in fall 2015.

Dr. Wesley Payne, college president, said over 50% of graduates take the survey and it is a “very reliable sample.”

Since 2014, the library has seen an increase in the number of physical books, DVDs and audio, and e-books, but a decrease in the number of databases available.

“I have always been an advocate of having a variety of resources available to students because I believe that they all learn differently,” Library Director Kathy Sanders said. “What one person may want in her hand or his hand to study, another might be very comfortable with an e-book. I have never been an advocate of an either or approach.”

There are currently over 14,490 physical books at the TRC library, which is an increase of over 4,000 since 2014. Media, DVDs and audio, has seen an increase of over 200 titles to over 1,611. E-books have seen the largest growth by over 91,000 titles. Sanders said these numbers don’t tell the whole story.

Since she took over as library director, Sanders has been working on making the collection of resources more focused on supplementing the classroom topics covered at the school and giving the library a more academic structure.

Sanders said when she first started in February 2013, there were piles of books around the building “thigh-high that were going out the door.”

“There was a movement at one point to eliminate a lot of the book collections in favor of electronics,” Sanders said.

Instead of continuing in that direction, she evaluated every book waiting to be gotten rid of and ended up keeping most of them. Sanders also looked through other parts of the collection to see what was needed.

“I got rid of the graphic novels collection, not because it isn’t a good collection, but because we don’t teach a course in graphic novels,” she said. “I got rid of the cookbooks. We don’t have a culinary school. I got rid of a lot of fiction that was old and wasn’t in curriculum.”

Of those that did leave the TRC library, Sanders said she tried to re-home as many as possible with pieces such as the graphic novels going to the Poplar Bluff Municipal Library. Despite the cuts, Sanders has been working to regrow the collection with a focus on what materials can help students with their studies, the courses offered and the programs taught. These changes, she said, have given the collection a whole “different tone.”

In addition to the pieces housed at the TRC library, students also have access to over 27 million items through the library’s MOBIUS Consortium membership. Through this program, the libraries in the system are able to request and borrow items from each other. TRC library is also part of the Prospector Consortium in Colorado through MOBIUS, which has 30 million items available.

“There is no excuse for a student to say ‘we didn’t have it here and I couldn’t get it,’” she said.

Despite more books being available to students, there’s been a slight decrease in circulation since 2014. Sanders said this isn’t abnormal at libraries now since more people are using online resources.

“It doesn’t disturb me at all,” she said. “I’d like for it to be greater and we always work for it to be greater.”

Sanders also went through the 82 databases the library subscribed to. She found that several of them were not true databases, but rather linked out to websites. This fact, along with the number of databases available, she said, was confusing and students didn’t know what to do with them.

“They don’t really know what a database is,” Sanders said.

Currently, students have access to 62 databases, which are more focused on true databases and is more targeted toward what students need for classes.

Looking at the numbers, this change has been beneficial to the students. In 2014, there were around 16,300 uses of the databases. So far in 2019, there have been over 25,400 uses of the databases.

Sanders said she attributes this to the decreased number available and a program the library does of promoting one database a month to encourage student use.

The most growth of the collection has been e-books, with over 244,000 available. In 2014, information wasn’t available about e-book usage, but so far this year there have been almost 3,000 uses.

“It’s a slow thing,” Sanders said. “We have a lot of students who say ‘I don’t want an e-book. I want something I can hold onto. I want something I can take home.’ A lot of the time textbooks and other books have a great deal of graphic detail in them, such as tables, charts, maps and pictures, and it’s too much to store on an e-book.”

The TRC library is open 56 hours a week, with staff members available over the phone or text to answer questions. Sanders said there’s been a focus on program outreach and literacy sessions. The library has an employee who travels to the different locations as well as high schools in Dexter, Malden, Kennett and Piedmont to go over information about using the library.

“We did not want the students who were not at Poplar Bluff to feel slighted in anyway that they were not getting instruction on how to use library resources,” Sanders said.

Looking forward, Sanders said she believes space is going to become an issue as the collections continue to grow, students and faculty being behind on computer skills and a need to keep up with technology.

Sanders said the online catalog will be searched differently soon, with more of a search engine style interface. It will be able to search through what the library owns and the databases available.