Blue Ridge Community College-Houff Library

Space and Physical Access

Nestled in the quaint town of Weyers Cave Virginia, Houff Library is located at the south end of the Blue Ridge Community College Campus. From the outside there is lots of parking, public transportation buses, and bike racks.

The library is located on the 2nd floor of a beautiful 3 story brick building. When entering the building you can access the library via stairs or an elevator. The library is a small space. When entering the library you immediately are immersed with books. To the right is a quiet space full of 25 computers. To the left is a group study area that has 25 single desks, and tables for group work. It was evident the different type of seating for an academic library. The layout of this particular academic library mirrors our textbook.  Rubin says “Today, the academic library is less a repository of information and more a learning space-a space for collaboration, group work, and the provision of commentary services designed to impact learning and promote student success” (2020, p. 137). There were several different types of stations with comfortable chairs included. As you continue through the library you pass the new book section and their seasonal monthly section. The help desk is located at the end of the library. Facing this section are audiobooks, dvd’s, children’s books and periodicals. Beside the help desk are copiers and printers for student use. Behind the help desk is a wonderful large tv with lots of advertisements for students on campus. On the east side of the library is door access to the campus human resources department. At the end of the help desk is open space that is not part of the library. It is a huge lounge area for students that includes stations of group tables, comfy chairs, and desks. There are no private rooms or meeting rooms.

Some of the stations setup for student interests were a chess board, and charging stations for technology. There was also a station setup with access to a hole punch, glue, stapler for student use.

The library is served as an access hallway where students can go from the south end of the entire building to the north end of the building. There were several students who used the library as a hallway to just pass through from one destination to another.

Services and Intellectual Access

There are lots of handouts for student help. My favorite just from being in a college course currently was the help stations for citations which included MLA and APA formatting. This was the first library that I visited that used the Library of Congress to organize their shelves.

Patrons and Staff

The library serves the students of Blue Ridge Community College mainly but also have user access cards for the public. The patrons that I observed were fresh high school graduates. I visited the library on a Friday morning when there were not many classes so there were not many patrons visible during the hours that I visited. While there were not many patrons the librarian present said that there were lots of diversity in their patrons. The college serves many purposes, even nursing for example therefore draws not only younger patrons but many patrons who are returning to school.

There was only one librarian present during my visit, there was also a ring bell for service to get help. The librarian was in his 30’s and had just transitioned to this academic library from the public library system. His thoughts on switching library genres was due to the better pay in an academic library.

I tried to find the staff listed on the website and there is no link to staff on the library website. I later found that the staff is listed but I would need to go through the list of staff on the actual Blue Ridge Community College website. The library has 5 people on staff who all have their MLS. I could not tell the diversity of the staff due to the fact that only their names and email addresses were given.

Collection

Since I visited in June there was an entire wall dedicated to pride month with lots of LGBTQ resources and collections.

The library did not have any sections for visually impaired. They did have a spanish language section and offered an online option for translation for special services. Due to this being an academic library there were not any resources for children except for a small row of books. They were also in the process of eliminating most all of their periodicals. These can all mostly be accessed online.

Digital Access

Here is a direct link to the Blue Ridge Community College Houff Library: https://www.brcc.edu/library/ . The Library uses Facebook as their social media outlet. I could not automatically connect to the wifi. I had to get a librarian to accommodate me with a printout and later had to actually show me the login. The website offers a tutorial which I appreciated, and also public access to their collections. The catalog is easy to access as well. They offer databases, books, films, a writing/citing/research help, ebooks, and interlibrary loan. My favorite item accessed on their website is the chat resource to reach out for help. For patrons who are not a current student there is limited access to resources. The only way much of the public can utilize the digital resources is to actually be using the established wifi for the community college.

Final Take-Aways

I personally did not like the layout of this library. It was almost as if it was just thrown into a part of the building. It was airy and open and as I mentioned earlier it was used as a hallway for students which could be a positive and a negative in the same aspect.

The fact that I had to ring a bell for service with only one working librarian was a bit of a wake up call for me.

References:  

Rubin, R. E. and Rubin, R. G. (2020). Foundations of library and information science (5th ed.). ALA Neal-Schuman.