ALQBlog

I'm Alison Lehner-Quam and I hope to give you a behind the scenes picture of all of the exciting things that are happening in the library to support Lehman students.

It is a really interesting time to be a librarian. Libraries are incorporating increasing amounts of electronic resources into their collections and into library instruction. Many of these resources can be accessed on digital readers and handheld devices. Library reference is happening 24/7 in an online chat forum. Ideas about what constitutes a book and the nature of publishing are being challenged.

I recently heard library futurist Stephen Abrams give a conference keynote address. He spoke about this dynamic time and how the inquiry process, asking questions, and learning how to find answers remains constant for librarians and library users--even as the various formats of the resources we access are changing. As this happens there is much work to be done to provide guidance and support to the Lehman community as well as there are opportunities to develop new kinds of resources.

I am relatively new to Lehman, having arrived as the substitute education librarian at the Leonard Lief Library in fall 2011. It is a great pleasure to get to know the extraordinary library and education faculty and to provide instruction and reference services to the education students--tomorrow's teachers. You'll hear more about this work in the blog.

Have you ever had a difficult time finding just the right resources for a paper? One of my favorite aspects of being a librarian is providing reference support for students. I enjoy helping students discover how to find just the right resource and how to develop search strategies.

Traditionally reference service takes place at the Reference Desk in the Library. Now there are many venues where students and librarians can meet to go over research strategies and where students can ask questions. In...

I have joined the community of librarians at Lehman who provide reference through the 24/7 Chat service. I like to think of this service as a virtual reference desk that never closes. On 24/7 Chat students pose questions online and librarians help students learn how to find responses to their questions. Inquiries come from Lehman students, from CUNY students, and from students all over the country and the world and they can be about library policy and procedures (“How do I put a book on hold?”)...