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Hello! I am Lynn Sutton, Dean of the Z Smith Reynolds Library or the ZSR as we affectionately
call it.
I hope you are enjoying this course, Deacon Development 101 for parents and families.
We, in the Library, sort of invented the ZSRx series as an open, online learning community
to engage all constituents in the Wake Forest family. We are particularly happy to partner
with the Office of Parent Programs this course because we feel a strong connection to Wake
Forest parents.
My job here today is to talk about the ways the Library itself can help your student.
It all comes from our mission: THE MISSION OF THE Z SMITH REYNOLDS LIBRARY IS TO HELP
OUR STUDENTS, FACULTY AND STAFF SUCCEED. Stop any library faculty or staff member on the
street and they can recite the mission from memory. No one in the university is more committed
to your student's success than ZSR.
You may have noticed that libraries in society are changing. The printed books that you and
I used in school are nothing compared to the vast universe of information available to
your student on their phone or tablet. We teach students how to find and use quality
information in their academic work. It is easy to find lots of bad information online,
but it's a lot harder to find and evaluate high quality information and that is what
we teach students. You may have heard Provost Kersh earlier in this course talk about the
fact that Generation Y students will have X jobs in their lifetime 49, 52, whatever.
They will need to learn new skills and acquire new information with each job. We teach them
the skills they will need for a whole lifetime of learning.
We start early in the semester to entice them into the Library with some fairly unusual
marketing techniques. For example, the first Friday evening after classes start we invite
students to play a game of Capture the Flag after the library closes. In October, hundreds
of students have a blast playing Humans v Zombies in the library again on a Friday night.
We are not crazy, we do this for a reason. We want them to see that we are not a cold,
rules-bound place like the stereotype of a library. We are actually nice, smart, funny
people. We have particular success in bringing in young men into the library who may not
have found their way yet at this point in the semester. The idea is that once they are
familiar with the place and the people who work there, they are much more likely to come
back when they need help.
We have a program called Wake the Library during final exams every semester where we
feed students every night at midnight in the library atrium. We give them free coffee 24
hours a day. We put up a graffiti board to offer stress relief. And it works. They love
us. Just ask them. When they say when you call that they are studying in the library
and they can't talk right now, believe them, because they're really there. ZSR is absolutely
the center of intellectual life at Wake.
So once they are comfortable, we can offer all the services for which we are famous.
We teach about 20 sections of a 1 ½ credit information literacy course, teaching them
the skills that I mentioned before they will need as information throughout their lives.
We have a dozen subject specialists who work with students one-on-one in Personal Research
Sessions, spending an hour at a time with them to plan the research they need to do
for their papers. We are leaders in campus technology and we show students on a formal
and informal basis how to make better use of their laptops, their phones and their tablets.
We have a wonderful collection of almost 2 million volumes of books and journals. We
have a superb collection of every film or DVD you can imagine. We have beautiful rare
book collection and a fascinating archival collection of primary source materials that
students will need and use in any number of courses.
We want to be a warm, welcoming and helpful place where students can do their best work.
And most of all, we have people who love their jobs and get up and come to work every morning
just to help your student succeed. And we are good at it. Two years ago, we won the
award as the best academic library in the nation, because we tie our mission so closely
to the mission of the university and our students.
So please enjoy the rest of this course and tell us how we can improve it for next year.
In the spring, we will offer additional courses in the ZSRx series that you are welcome and
encouraged to take. Learning doesn't stop when you are parent any more than it does
for your students. ZSR can help you succeed, too.