Integrating Library Services Between Two Urban Institutions

Joseph Hartnett

doi:10.31641/ulj210105

Abstract

In 2006, an intra-institutional partnership was formed between the William and Anita Newman Library at Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY) and the CUNY School of Professional Studies (SPS) for the provision of library services to the university’s first entirely online degree program in the fall of 2006, the CUNY Online BA in Communication and Culture. Since 2006, SPS has grown exponentially. Currently, SPS offers 10 undergraduate degrees, including a BS in nursing and six masters’ degrees, including MS degrees in urban studies, data analytics, and an MA in applied theatre. Integrating a new and growing school with its own unique practical and programmatic needs into an existing college library posed unique challenges and opportunities in an effort to provide the same suite of services to the externally based SPS distance community as those offered to traditional Baruch students and faculty. The experience of launching such services is examined through the lens of the current literature for the purposes of highlighting examples of lessons learned for the benefit to librarians currently supporting or considering support for an influx distance learners at their institutions. This paper describes the author’s experiences as the library’s liaison to the school in planning, launching, and providing highly used library services for this unique urban population while at the same time establishing a foundation for providing similar services for our home institution.

Highlights

In 2006, an intra-institutional partnership was formed between the William and Anita Newman Library at Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY) and the CUNY School of Professional Studies (SPS) to provide library services to the university’s first entirely online degree program, the CUNY Online BA in Communication and Culture
Just prior to the launch, we provided their offices with a library services brochure that listed the fall hours, as well as my personal business card, which would be included as well in a package of CUNY Online BA material that would be mailed to enrolled students
The experiences we had when faced with a sudden influx of distance leaners gave us something of a crash course in developing such services, and doing so allowed us to identify some unique problems and pose some unique solutions that did not exist in the literature and still do not

Summary

Introduction

In 2006, an intra-institutional partnership was formed between the William and Anita Newman Library at Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY) and the CUNY School of Professional Studies (SPS) to provide library services to the university’s first entirely online degree program, the CUNY Online BA in Communication and Culture. The initial question was: What changes needed to be made in order for a face-to-face library to begin supporting distance learners?. There is a body of research that details the wants, needs and expectations of faculty, students, and librarians involved with distance learning and the means by which to assess such services (Kvenild & Bowles-Terry, 2011; Ritterbush, 2014; Thomsett-Scott & May, 2009; White, 2010). The circumstances under which our library embarked upon providing these services were unique, as we were asked to initiate support for online students from an external school with a library oriented to faceto-face interactions with its primary constituents. We did not know exactly what to expect, and like many libraries at the time that were faced with the task of supporting distance learners, we built our own model after surveying the options other libraries offered, and in consultation with the ACRL guidelines. Like SPS, we were “flying the plane while building it” (Walters, Smiley, Otte, & Bernhardt, 2011)

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