Students working in the library
To understand how something works, it often helps to narrow in on one small piece of the puzzle and work out from there. To understand how your college library works, it can help to narrow in on one day in the life of the library to paint a picture—or a “snapshot”—of the kind of business done and services provided by the library overall. On April 16, 2015, the CSN libraries participated in the state-wide Nevada Library Association “Snap Shot Day” to collect statistics and photos showing a day in the life of a Nevada library. Here’s what happened at CSN:
Visitors: 5,437
That’s right—across all three campuses, in a single day, over 5,000 students, faculty, or community members came to visit a CSN library in person. Almost 4,000 of these visitors came to the Charleston campus, but Cheyenne and Henderson also did steady business. Cheyenne had students coming in to see the therapy dogs at the Cheyenne campus library that week that help stressed-out students take a much needed break from studies. The Henderson campus library circulated the most books per student with a ratio of one book checked out for every two and a half student visitors.
Website hits: 2,511
The CSN library website also had almost half as many virtual visitors as the total in-person visitors in one day in the life of a CSN library. These web users spent time searching for materials through the library’s OneSearch bar: 658 searches to be exact. If you’ve never looked for materials through the OneSearch bar (to search almost the entire library website at once), it’s easy to locate on the library homepage since it’s right in the center of the page (www.csn.edu/library).
Therapy Dog Dash helping students destress.
And what do the people appreciate about the library? Comments collected throughout the day cited such services as “access to media,” “study, quiet space,” and staff that is “helpful and polite.”
For more information about Snap Shot Day, or to view the final results of all libraries across Nevada (to be released later this year), visit http://nevadalibraries.org/snapshot/index.html.
And if you have questions about any library services–big, small, digital, or in person–feel free to contact a librarian to help you out! We want to make sure all faculty, staff, and students understand our piece of the college puzzle and how we ultimately contribute to students’ overall success.
