Students have access to more books

The University Library just got five times bigger.

Through the reciprocal book borrowing program, students can now check out books from five neighboring community colleges.

"That's great, because it might be more convenient to go to one of the colleges closer to home," said Trina Young, a senior computer science major. "It will save a lot of time."

The agreement gives Cal State Long Beach students the ability to check out material from El Camino, Cypress, Long Beach City, Santa Ana, and Cerritos community colleges using their CSULB identification card. It gives students and staff from these schools greater access to resources, said Henry DuBois, the Library's associate dean.

"Most community college libraries have collections in the range of 100,000 volumes," DuBois said. "CSULB has a collection about 14 times that size, so we are likely to have more specialized and scholarly books and journals which may help supplement the resources available to students of local community college libraries."

Though the program will increase the number of students with access to the CSULB library, DuBois does not expect this to limit the university's access to materials.

"Our experience over the years has shown that community borrowers represent a very small percentage of our total circulation," DuBois said. "We are continuing to monitor this, however, as the number of eligible borrowers increases."

The program differs from the interlibrary loan and LINK+ programs that allow access to material from other libraries, he added. The interlibrary loan program searches other libraries around the country for books or articles not available on campus. There is no cost for this service, but it can take a week or more to receive the material, DuBois said.

The LINK+ program allows students to use COAST, the Library's computerized catalog system, to find books at 11 other state academic libraries. This program may take up to three days.

DuBois said he feels that the reciprocal borrowing program not only provides a great convenience for faculty and students, but that it also is a type of community outreach.

"CSULB Library wants to be hospitable to the students and faculty of as many of our nearby institutions of higher learning as possible since there is a mutual benefit," Dubois said.