Teaching Resources Center NCATE/NC DPI Report

J.Y. Joyner Teaching Resources Center In Support of the College of Education

Introduction

J.Y. Joyner Library and the Teaching Resources Center provide a wide range of support to the College of Education in its effort to graduate candidates who are knowledgeable and effective practitioners in their chosen field whether it be school counseling, classroom teaching, librarianship, working with diverse learners or as educational leaders. The resources and services of the library enable the reflective educator to analyze and evaluate their knowledge and practice in terms of theory, research and experiences in and out of the classroom and school. The library strives to provide resources that reflect a wide variety of opinions and cultural differences. These resources provide a knowledge base to assist an education candidate and/or graduate in responding positively to administrative challenges in ways that respect individual, developmental, cultural and social differences. The knowledge and information skills education candidates acquire using the services and resources of the library foster the development and use of leadership skills in curriculum and instructional policy decisions as they become leaders in their communities. [Top]

Collection Resources: Quality resources help build a quality knowledge base for education candidates.

The cornerstone of J.Y. Joyner Library's support of the College of Education is its collection of resources. All of the qualities the College of Education strives to instill in their candidates must be grounded in a solid knowledge base of education theory and instructional best practices. The library acquires educational resources for a variety of collections within the library. The following collections contain materials that support the College of Education curriculum.

General Collection:
Academic Library Services (ALS) supports the campus community’s mission of teaching, research, and service through J. Y. Joyner Library’s collection of more than 1.2 million volumes, 13,799 print subscriptions, 10,839 electronic subscriptions, more than 170 databases, 2.5 million microforms, and extensive collections of government documents, maps, manuscripts, rare books and archival records. The library is engaged in a full digitalization program. ALS has a $2.8 million materials budget and employs a staff of 117, including 33 faculty positions. Additionally, the library employs 150-200 undergraduate and graduate students. The bulk of the library's print resources, over 1.2 million volumes, are located in the circulating collection. The majority of the Education materials fall within the 'Ls' of the Library of Congress Classification scheme, which contains approximately 31,647 titles (36,653 volumes).
Reference Collection:
This collection contains a variety of statistical and program information as well legal information of interest to education candidates. Reference desk services are provided during all hours of library operation.
Education Dissertations:
The library owns two copies of doctoral and master thesis produced by candidates from the College of Education as well as some titles from other institutions. Print copies of these documents are located in both the general collection and special collections.
Professional Journals:
The library subscribes to more than 380 professional education journals. Approximately 80% of all the education journals indexed in ERIC are available in either print or electronic format.
ERIC Documents:
The library owns the majority of the collection of ERIC documents on microfiche up to June 2004.
Government Documents:
J. Y. Joyner Library is a depository for both Federal and State documents. Every effort is made to collect local education documents.
Non-print Collection:
This collection consists predominately of videocassettes and DVDs but also includes audiocassettes, kits, compact discs and computer software.

Teaching Resources Center (TRC):
Housed in the library on the second floor, this collection is specifically developed to provide education candidates access to PreK-12 curriculum materials. The collection includes: North Carolina state adopted textbooks as well as supplemental textbooks, manipulatives, video cassettes, DVDs, multimedia software, audio cassettes, big books, easy/picture books, juvenile/young adult fiction/nonfiction, special books (rare and collectible children’s literature) and reference materials (K-12). The collection houses over 41,098 titles (54,600 items). Education candidates use these materials in the development of instructional units for methods courses and clinical experiences. Members of the Teaching Resources Center provide professional desk service during its hours of operation. The staff includes eight full time employees. The center also employs 11 part-time undergraduate students as well as two part-time graduate students. In June of 2005, Library Services Unlimited was hired to assess the TRC collection and its facility arrangements. Based on the TRC Collection and Facility Assessment Report, the library has allocated additional funding this year to address the recommendations. Also, a copy of the TRC Collection Development Guidelines is available online.

Ronnie Barnes African-American Resource Center:
The collection consist of over 627 award winning juvenile books including the Coretta Scott King Award books, biographies of African-Americans as well as outstanding, scholarly books written by and about African Americans. These materials are available for checkout by faculty, staff, students, educators and area residents to provide additional knowledge about the African-American experience. This collection provides valuable diverse materials for education candidates to integrate into the classroom.

ETC (Enhancing Teachers’ Classrooms) Room:
The Enhancing Teachers’ Classrooms (ETC) Room is located in the Teaching Resources Center. The room is designed to assist education candidates and eastern North Carolina educators in the creation and preparation of materials for use in lesson units, classrooms, and presentations. A laminator, two Ellison Die-Cut centers with over 400 dies, an artwaxer, a badge-a-minute machine, a binding system machine, a heavy duty book stapler, a light box and office supply items such as scissors, paperclips, rubber bands and tape are available for use in the room. The room also houses three computer workstations with software installed to create such items as handouts, maps, timelines, activity sheets, bulletin board graphics and classroom badges. Educational software available on the workstations includes: Microsoft Office, Adobe Professional, Button Builder, Calendar Creator, Kid Pix, PrintShop Deluxe, Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia FreeHand, Art Explosion, Essential Teacher Tools, GraphicMaster, Mapmakers Toolkit, Timeliner, and Math Type. TRC staff and faculty are available to assist patrons in the use of any equipment operations or software in the room. The guidelines for the usage of the ETC room can be found at http://www.ecu.edu/cs-lib/trc/etcguidelines.cfm. [Top]

Resource Acquisition: Acquisition of educational resources is a joint effort involving College of Education and Library Faculty.

The College of Education may have representation by election on the Faculty Senate Academic Library Committee. The function of this committee is to advise and consult with the library staff, students, faculty and the director in matters pertaining to the operation of the library. In addition, the College of Education has a Library Committee consisting of six members who represent each department in the College. The current committee members are Johna Faulconer (Curriculum and Instruction), Robert Hunting (Math and Science Education), Steven Mark (Business, Career, and Technical Education), Cheryl McFadden (Educational Leadership), Jack Schmidt (Counselor and Adult Education) and Larry White-Chair (Library Science and Instructional Technology). These representatives are appointed to coordinate acquisition requests for their department. The library has a Liaison Program that assigns a library liaison to the College of Education. This librarian works with the College of Education Library Committee to assure the education resources support the education curriculum. Requests are made by departments through the College of Education representatives. Then, the chairperson of the COE Library Committee submits them to the Education Library Liaison. The library liaison sends the requests to the Acquisitions Department for purchase. This process eliminates duplication and provides for a well-balanced collection. All PreK-12 Curriculum requests are sent to the TRC Curriculum Specialist from the Education Library Liaison during the process.

To help facilitate the development of education resources, the library makes use of an approval plan service provided by Yankee Book Peddler. Through this program, the bulk of all education titles published by the major publishing houses and university presses are received by the library for preview. Faculty members from the College of Education are encouraged to come to the library to review these titles and indicate which titles should be retained. The Education Library Liaison also reviews the titles. Through this review process, the library retains about 90% of all titles received for approval. These titles are then supplemented by direct requests from the College of Education Faculty for additional print titles as well as non-print titles. The College of Education Library Committee will be reviewing the approval plan profile this year to ensure that the titles being sent are supporting the needs of the College.

In preparation for new programs, faculty from both the College of Education and library conduct a detailed analysis of educational resources in the areas of the new programs. This analysis focuses on journal resources as well as monographs to assure the collection is properly balanced to support both the practical and theoretical needs of the College's candidates.

The TRC Curriculum Specialist is the librarian who is responsible for developing and maintaining the Curriculum Collection. The TRC Curriculum Specialist works closely with both the Education Faculty and students in determining the needed materials to support education candidates in their development of instructional units. Every year allocations are dedicated to the purchase of award winning children's and young adult literature. The library receives these titles automatically through a standing order children’s award winning titles approval plan with Yankee Book Peddler. [Top]

Financial Resources: Financial allocations are based on curriculum needs.

Currently, the library materials expenditures are based the MAP formula. MAP stands for Materials Allocation Plan, and incorporates data from the campus at large. The formula considers such factors as the number of credit hours and course sections, number of FTE faculty and majors, and the average cost of a book in the discipline. The formula is always reviewed by the head of collection development who makes adjustments to the formula as circumstances warrant. The primary goal is to develop a collection which supports the needs of the academic unit and which provides a resource for the broader University community.

Total expenditures for education resources have remained consistent over the past four years with a significant increase in this year’s allocations. A detailed analysis of the budget can be viewed at Library Expenditures for Education Acquisitions.

The Teaching Resources Center receives free preview copies of all curriculum materials that are being considered for adoption by the state of North Carolina. Over the five year adoption cycle, the TRC receives nearly a half million dollars worth of materials. In addition to these 'gift' materials, the TRC purchases additional special education resources, instructional technology and children's and young adult literature. In 2006, the center is implementing a review service. This service works in partnership with several vendors to supply books for the center. The center, in turn, makes these titles available for education candidates, educators and faculty to review for input. The written reviews are submitted to the vendors for valuable feedback regarding the topics and titles of the materials. [Top]

Access to Resources: Access to educational resources is essential to building a knowledge base.

Education faculty and candidates have easy access to the wealth of resources provided by J. Y. Joyner Library through a variety of means. There are over 348 electronic research stations in the library, which assist candidates in identifying and locating needed resources. These same electronic research tools are also available at any computer on campus via the Library's web site. In addition candidates can access these electronic research tools from computers off campus using their PirateMail ID user name and password.

The library has had an online catalog since the early 1980s. Using the catalog, faculty and candidates can determine what materials the library owns. The majority of education resources are classified within the Library of Congress' 'L' classification scheme; while, the PreK-12 curriculum resources are classified within the Dewey Decimal Classification System. Additional resources vital to educational research can be found in other classifications because of the interdisciplinary nature of the field of education. Using keyword and subject searching and the limiting capabilities of the online catalog, candidates can easily identify resources anywhere in the collection. The catalog also provides live links to full text e-journals, e-books, government documents and cataloged web sites.

While the online catalog is the primary electronic research tool for identifying resources and journals of which the library owns and subscribes, education candidates also need to use a variety of electronic indexes to determine what articles are in those journals. The following is a description of some of the library's electronic research tools that help education faculty and candidates in their quest for current information.

ERIC
J. Y. Joyner Library provides education candidates and faculty access to the ERIC database via the service provider, EBSCO/NCLive. This database provides links to full text journal articles and ERIC documents back to 1993 with abstracts and citations back to 1966.

PsycINFO (Psychology)
This database contains citations and summaries of journal articles, book chapters, books, and technical reports, as well as citations to dissertations, all in the field of psychology and psychological aspects of related disciplines, such as medicine, psychiatry, nursing, sociology, education, pharmacology, physiology, linguistics, anthropology, business, and law. Journal coverage, spanning 1887-present, includes international material selected from more than 1,300 periodicals written in over 25 languages. Current chapter and book coverage includes worldwide English-language material published from 1987-present. Over 55,000 references are added annually through regular updates. PsycArticles, the core journals published by the APA, are embedded within PsycINFO.

Cabell’s Directory of Publishing Opportunities in Education
Browse the table of contents or index, or search for journals on various topics. View journal description pages in PDF format. This is the current online version.

Education Abstracts
This database indexes and abstracts articles from 528 education periodicals and yearbooks. Articles from books relating to education, which were published after 1995, are also included. Topics include a wide range of contemporary education issues including adult education, continuing education, library science, literacy standards, multicultural/ethnic education, teaching methods, etc. This database is produced by H.W. Wilson and the search interface is via EBSCOhost.

Education Law in North Carolina
Education Law in North Carolina (ELNC) is an electronic source of up-to-date information about federal and state laws and court cases that affect North Carolina's public schools. ELNC addresses a wide range of legal issues including the power and authority of the local board of education, constitutional rights, student searches, teacher nonrenewal and dismissal, special education, cyber law, and tort law. It features clear, concise explanations of changes adopted by the North Carolina General Assembly, information about recent court decisions affecting public schools, and a newly revised chapter regarding school property transactions. Updated annually.

KCDLOnline: Kraus Curriculum Development Library
KCDLOnline is a searchable database that provides curriculum information on a variety of subjects and educational levels. The database includes curricula, frameworks, and standards bring together educational objectives, content, instructional strategies, and evaluative techniques for all subjects covered in PreK-12 and Adult Basic Education. With nearly 4500 curriculum documents, KCDLOnline provides a direct link to the curricula and contact information on the agencies that issue the curricula. Materials prior to 2000 are available on microfiche in the TRC. Materials after 2000 are available online in pdf format.

Library Literature and Information Science
Indexes articles and book reviews in more than 234 key library and information science periodicals published in the United States and elsewhere from 1980 to the current. Books, chapters in collected works such as conference proceedings, library school theses, and pamphlets are also indexed.

LISA (Library and Information Science Abstracts)
LISA is an international abstracting and indexing tool designed for library professionals and other information specialists. LISA currently abstracts over 440 periodicals from more than 68 countries and in more than 20 different languages from 1969 forward. Subject areas include computer science applications.

LISTA (Library and Information Science & Technical Abstracts)
LISTA is an open access index for more than 600 periodicals, plus books, research reports and proceedings. Subject coverage includes librarianship, classification, cataloging, bibliometrics, online information retrieval, information management and more. Coverage in the database extends back as far as the mid 1960’s.

Proquest Dissertations and Theses
Includes citations for dissertations, beginning with the first U.S. dissertation accepted in 1861, to those accepted as recently as last semester. Dissertations published from 1980 forward include author-written abstracts. Citations for master's theses from 1988 forward include abstracts. The database represents the work of authors from over 1,000 North American graduate schools and European universities. UMI offers over a million dissertations in full text, for an additional fee. Users may also request Interlibrary Loan for dissertations. This database was formerly called Digital Dissertations.

Additional Research Databases: Because the field of education is diversity and interdisciplinary, candidates and faculty also have access to databases in the field of psychology, public administration, social work, linguistics, medicine, law, etc. A complete list of all the electronic databases available is available on the Electronic Resources web page. Databases of particular interest to education faculty and candidates include: Academic Search Premiere; CINAHL [a nursing index]; Modern Language Association International Bibliography, Linguistics and Language Abstracts, and five Lexis Nexis databases [Academic Universe, Congressional, Environmental, Primary Sources in US History, and Statistical Universe]. For a complete list of all of the library's databases go to Electronic Resources Title page.

In addition to providing access to a wide variety of electronic databases the library subscribes to approximately numerous electronic journals. The majority of these journals are cataloged in the integrated library system with a link to the e-journal or to the service which provides the full text. The service, SFX, allows patrons to link from an article citation in one database to a full text copy of that article in another, or to see if a particular article or specific journal is available in full text electronic format. SFX allows patrons to determine the location of print journals.

Many databases include a current awareness service, which allows faculty and candidates to create subject specific search strategies such as 'inclusion in mathematics' and/or select specific journal titles such as Journal of Educational Research. The service then monitors the database on a weekly basis. It delivers the table of contents of specific journals directly to the professor's e-mail box when the new issue is published. Subject or author searches result in a list of individual article citations.

If education faculty and/or candidates discover a resource [book, journal article, dissertation, etc.], which is not owned by J. Y. Joyner Library, they can request the library to obtain it from another source via the Interlibrary Loan Services. Faculty and candidates can submit requests electronically and most materials are delivered to their desktops. Candidates and faculty also have borrowing privileges at all 16 UNC campuses across the state.

Materials in the Teaching Resources Center (TRC) can also be accessed using the online catalog. Using the limiting features of the online catalog, curriculum materials can be easily located. Specific information about how to locate these materials can be found at on the TRC web site.

The library also maintains numerous databases that provide a wide variety of magazines and tools such as encyclopedias, almanacs, maps, e-books, etc for grade levels K-12. These databases include: Britannica Online School Edition, EBSCO Animals, MAS Ultra School Edition, Middle Search Plus, Primary Search and Searchasaurus. In addition, all education candidates have access to NC Wise Owl through the use of a password. [Top]

Instructional Support: Information Literacy skills are essential for a candidate to become a knowledgeable, effective practitioner.

J. Y. Joyner Library's faculty and staff offer a variety of instructional services, which will help education faculty and candidates develop and refine their information literacy skills. In this information age faculty and candidates can easily get lost in a sea of data. The library strives to develop and maintain an instructional program which will enable candidates to not only locate needed information and resources but also how to evaluate the resources whether they are books, journal articles or web sites to determine the quality of information provided. Four TRC faculty members provide education specific instructional services. They also strive to be models for candidates on how to teach K-12 students similar information skills.

As mentioned earlier in this document the library has developed a Liaison Program to work with faculty members. Liaison responsibilities include any subject-oriented contact with faculty and candidates. This includes reference and bibliographic service, library instruction for classes, collection development, and course, program and/or accreditation reports. To carry out these responsibilities a library liaison must work closely with the education faculty.

At the most basic level the education liaison is the contact person for providing general and specialized reference/research service in the field of education to the general public and education candidates and faculty. Services might include but are not limited to providing on-call information services, creating bibliographies of resources, assisting faculty in locating statistical information and developing electronic end-user guides for electronic research tools.

Since the reference/research services include an instructional component, one of the major responsibilities of the education liaison is to serve as the contact person for scheduling instruction. Since the Library is in the business of providing information, the foundation of the library’s instruction is in the area of Information Literacy. This instruction is not limited to showing a person the mechanics of locating a book in the online catalog or an article in a journal. It also instructs the candidate or professor in analyzing their own information needs, constructing a logical and successful search strategy, executing that search strategy and then evaluating the information resources found for validity and appropriateness. In some cases, the instruction may also include creating a presentation from the information retrieve. There are two basic ways the library provides instructional support to the College of Education: face-to-face instruction and electronic instruction.

The more traditional face-to-face instruction occurs on two levels: individual instruction and/or group instruction. The individual instruction usually occurs at the reference desk or by setting up individual appointments with the library faculty members and is very informal. Group instruction on the other hand is more structured and formal. The library faculty members work closely with the teaching faculty to determine the information and instructional needs of a particular class. This may range from basic orientation to the library and/or Teaching Resources Center to teaching in-depth research skills to doctoral candidates. Last year the TRC conducted 51 classes, which involved 1229 education candidates. Instruction is designed to help education candidates successfully complete their instructional assignments whether it is to create a learning center or instructional unit for their clinical assignments or a research proposal for their thesis. Content areas covered in these classes include but are not limited to: curriculum integration, children's and young adult literature, technology integration, educational research, subject specific resources, and how to create projects using various educational software.

User guides, subject specific bibliographies and educational web links are provided to assist education candidates in their quest for curriculum materials. The library also provides online research assistance to faculty and candidates via email, instant messaging and consultation. Although this is not a 24/7 service, librarians respond to requests within 24 hrs.

East Carolina University is committed to Distance Education, and the College of Education is a very active user of this alternative method of delivering courses. To support the University's efforts the library has recently hired a Distance Education Librarian. This person works with departments and the TRC to assure equal access of resources and services to remote candidates. Reference and instructional services are provided electronically whenever possible. If an electronic form is not available, a hard copy of the material will be sent via postal mail. For a more detailed explanation of these services see the Joyner Library Services for our Distance Learning Community web page. [Top]

TRC Outreach Services: The program has formed partnerships with eastern North Carolina school systems of the Walter and Daisy Carson Latham Clinical Schools Network.

In order to extend the resources, services and materials of the Teaching Resources Center to educators of eastern North Carolina, an outreach program is available. With the support and encouragement of the library administration, the outreach program began. The outreach program was designed to increase and diversify the center’s audience to include area educators offering innovative programs and services to strengthen partnerships with eastern North Carolina schools. To strengthen these partnerships, the TRC identified mutual interests and needs that would accommodate and extend its resources, materials and services to the schools. A TRC Outreach Coordinator was hired to implement and manage the program. Established in 2003, the Teaching Resources Center Outreach Program encompasses three significant components: 1) a free Educator Library Card, 2) Interlibrary Loan Services to area public schools and 3) free access to the Enhancing Teachers’ Classrooms production center. Upon graduation from East Carolina University, the outreach components are offered to graduates employed by the schools serviced by the outreach program.

TRC Exhibits: Emphasizing materials and resources available for classroom integration through displays.

A variety of attractive and informative educational displays are designed and produced by the members of the TRC. Many of the displays highlight the valuable resources available in the center while providing easy and immediate access to the items. An example of such a display would include the desk countertop displays of seasonal and celebration materials. In addition to resource displays, the TRC partners with the ECU School of Art and Design, the Visual Arts Academy of the Greenville Museum of Art, individual artists and area county school art programs to exhibit individual and group works of art. Current and previous exhibits may be viewed at the Teaching Resources Center Exhibits web page.

North Carolina History and Fiction Digital Library: The digital library provides valuable resources to educators and students.

In 2003-2004, approximately 200 texts were digitized pertaining to the history of 29 eastern North Carolina counties. The materials were selected from the North Carolina Collection and the Snow L. and B.W. Roberts Collection of over 1,100 works of fiction set in North Carolina dating from 1734. Some materials related to Dare County were selected from the Outer Banks History Center collection. The project became an immediate success. In 2004-2005, Joyner Library partnered with Historic Hope Foundation, Tobacco Farm Life Museum, the Country Doctor Museum and members of ECU's College of Education to expand the North Carolina History and Fiction Digital Library. The successful recipient of the first three-year Heritage Partners grant awarded by NC ECHO, Joyner and its partners are making available over 20,000 additional pages of historic texts related to eastern North Carolina, zoomable maps, zoomable images and video footage of museum artifacts as well as related alignments and lesson plans for North Carolina educators. Focus groups with area educators refined the site to better meet the needs of teachers and students. Improvements and additional features continue to be added in the planning for the third and final year of the grant. This project brings together local history materials, historical fiction related to these localities, and museum artifacts that highlight Eastern North Carolina's rich past.

Conclusion

In an effort to support the College of Education in its efforts to educate candidates who reflect the College's Conceptual Framework, J. Y. Joyner Library is committed to maintaining quality through a collection of print and electronic resources and providing high quality services to the education faculty and candidates.

Report prepared by Linda M. Teel (February 2006) [Top]