WRITE-IN AND LATE NIGHT AT THE LIBRARY

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We're staying open late so you can get help with your last minute assignments. Get assistance from our librarians and writing center tutors, eat free food, win cool prizes, watch a movie. Join Us!!

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COLLEGE & COMMUNITY

The South Puget Sound Community College Library is the hub of our college (SPSCC) and is located at the center of our college campus. SPSCC is a beautiful campus, complete with quaint winding roads and beautiful foliage. There is very little landscaping needed due to the Pacific Northwest climate that provides its own beauty, including our tall trees with all kinds of other trees interspersed. We have a creek running through the campus that has a salmon run each Fall that you can watch from a couple of bridge walkways. One such walkway is a very old and historic footbridge.

The college is located on the boundary of two cities, Olympia and Tumwater and even the USPS will deliver mail to us when it’s addressed to a Tumwater address. The boundaries of both towns snake around campus. There is a third city, Lacey, that is part of our tri-city area which is also part of the snaking of boundaries and kinda reminds me of certain gerrymandering images that I’ve seen. Our public transportation is called Intercity Transit (IT) and they make multiple stops here using multiple routes and is free to both students and staff. There is a small airport outside of town, closest to Tumwater, but no commercial flights use it, so one has to commute to the larger International airport up near Seattle called SeaTac (SEA), a 45-50 minute drive, if the traffic is decent.

There aren’t really any businesses to speak of that are near the library. The only businesses I’ve seen are a 7-11, a bar, a massage school, a small gym, auto parts store and various businesses that I don’t know anything about. The area is more of a place for outlying businesses than for any popular destinations that downtown is more known for. Downtown Olympia is only about 2-3 miles away but it’s quite the distance when you take into account the big hill one has to traverse to get there, as well as crossing Highway 101. This college is not a walkable college, meaning that it’s not easy to walk to, so the Intercity Transit bus system is quite popular as are personal vehicles. Public transportation also offers ride sharing in addition to their multiple bus routes. In any case, I’m saying that one has to plan to come to campus, they don’t just wander by and mosey in to take a look at anything. It’s a purposeful visit.

Historically, this area was where the Coastal Salish tribe lived for many generations and according to the City of Olympia website (History of Olympia, Washington, 2015) was “a favorite shellfish gathering site”. After the first American settlers decided the area was theirs, first naming it Smither/Smithster and later Smithfield, it turned into a lumber town. Now known as Olympia, it is known to be the state capital and a busy state government town.

In the downtown area, there is so much to do year round, even with the threat of rain always over us. Olympia has a very successful Farmer’s Market, a beautiful lake below the Capitol Building, wonderful parks around the lake where people lounge, read and walk. I think our public transportation is second to none. Surprisingly, right near the water front, along with our boardwalk and seafood restaurants, is the Port of Olympia, a well-guarded huge area where all you can see for blocks and blocks are logged trees, ready to be shipped out from our port. The lumber aspect of our past is still thriving.

There are two other colleges in town that are four year colleges and a lot of our students transfer to them, but they also transfer to several other four year colleges in the state (University of Washington, Washington State University, Eastern Washington University and many more). Locally, we have our famous liberal arts college, The Evergreen State College (TESC) and a private college, St. Martin’s University. We don’t see any of these four year colleges are competitors because we know that a lot of our students just want to get their two year AA or AAS degrees or certificates for quick job employment. Any students who do transfer to a four year college mainly come here for the cheaper tuition for their first two years or for their free tuition in our high school program called Running Start where high school juniors and seniors are allowed to take college courses that count for both college and high school credit.

MISSION, VISION, VALUES

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DEMOGRAPHICS AND STATISTICS

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WRITE-IN & LATE NIGHT @ THE LIBRARY

Outreach Plan Program Goal

We have put together a program for the week before finals where the students can stay in the library until midnight to try to finish their quarter papers. The program is called ‘Late Night @ the Library’. The night we remain open will include free food, movies, drinks, drawing for a cool prize and, best of all, librarians ready to help with any last minute needs. We are also trying to meet our mission, vision and value statement by supporting student success by providing information, ideas and creative works, as well as continually being responsive to our college community, maximizing learning opportunities and reducing barriers.

The Program Objective

The program objective is to help students with their last push of the quarter in finishing their schoolwork and final projects/papers. We want to meet our value of providing resources to support students in achieving their goals.

The Program Focus

My vision of the program is for all the people who need extra help with their schoolwork to feel welcome to come to our Late Night at the Library program and get their work done (or started!). There are staff who are very helpful with program that we have in our library, mostly our circulation staff, but most importantly, our reference librarians. We are also lucky in that the writing center tutors stay late with us and help students with their writing issues.

Statement of need

There is always a need for more open library hours and every time we have a library survey, the need is mentioned. They want us to open earlier, they want us to stay open later, and they want us to be open on Sundays and more hours on Saturdays. Having a ‘Late Night at the Library’ program is one way of trying to answer their need, albeit just for one night.

What is your Target Group?

The target group is for all students enrolled at our college, but especially those who use the library daily but need extra time to get their last minute papers done. We already know from surveys and closing time comments that students don’t want the library to close when they are in the middle of their schoolwork.

Estimated number of potential participants

We can’t really guess how many patrons will participate in our Late Night at the Library program, but we know from the past when we’ve held it that it’s quite popular and many students take advantage of the extra help and time in the library. We started advertising it a month in advance on our website, our social media, flyers, posters, bookmarks and the college TV announcement screens. I wanted to include QR codes, but by the time I figured out how to do it, I had already created, printed out, and handed out the marketing materials.

Potential partners based on your assets assessment

This program is supported mostly by the library staff, consisting of one librarian and one circulation staff member. The college is a great support to us in allowing us to remain open until midnight. We have a great security department where the security guards pop in from time to time, but extra stops for this program. They are also available to walk anybody to the bus stop or their cars because it’s quite dark here at night. The college itself helped out by sharing our Facebook posts on the main college Facebook page.

Available library physical space

The SPSCC library is a newly remodeled area of the college that we moved into in December of 2013. We went from the space of 12, 320 square feet to 25,730 square feet when we moved. We now have the huge quiet reading room we’ve always wanted and several small group study rooms. We also have a classroom where bibliographic instruction is taught. However, this program will be in the main library area and spill into the study rooms and classroom, where we have extra student computers.

Skills of your Staff

The SPSCC Library has three full time librarians who all share the task of collection development amongst themselves by academic categories. They are called library liaisons and work closely with faculty within each department in their respective disciplines. These three librarians also share the weeding tasks in the same categories that they are liaison for on a 4 year schedule. These librarians are very skills in reference work, as well as bibliographic instruction aka information literacy skills.

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