About Reference
The purpose of the Reference Department is to assist the college community, students, faculty, and staff in using the resources of the library.
Consistent with higher education philosophy and the Fitchburg State College Library mission statement, the Reference department commits itself to instructing students in research methods and in the use of indexes, catalogs and other instruments of information retrieval.
Questions Answered
Our reference staff answers many questions throughout the year. The majority of these fall into the following three categories.
DIRECTIONAL
Explaining to a patron the location of items or rooms in the library.
REFERENCE
Providing an answer with a specific source in hand. For example, a definition, the location of something in another part of campus.
RESEARCH
Providing assistance in which the following criteria are met:
The patron has some project to complete.
The librarian has to explain various methods of locating the desired information.
Collection Development
All professional librarians participate in ordering materials for the maintenance of a general reference collection and a ready-reference collection. The ready-reference collection consists of the most used materials in the reference collection and those items which will provide a quick answer.
Finding Aids
Our librarians create and maintain Research Guides, which provide reference information and search terms to use for a variety of subjects.
Library Instruction
Library classes are offered for new students, including freshmen and transfer students, as well as new faculty and international students. Library instruction programs requiring in-depth subject research are taught in upon request of faculty members.
For more detailed information about sessions for on campus courses, view our Library Instruction webpage. For more detailed information about sessions for distance learning and extended campus courses, view our Distributed Learning Library Instruction webpage.
Dialog Searching
This service, maintained by the Reference Department, consists of funded searching for faculty staff and librarians and fee-based searches for others. It is used when patrons have exhausted the available online databases in their field.
Reference Service Policies
Library Patrons
Reference assistance is available without charge to all patrons. Reference questions are handled one at a time, in order of submission, including telephone queries.
The Reference Department serves the academic community, therefore the majority of requests will be of an academic nature. Questions pertaining to academics are expected to be answered using Fitchburg State College facilities.
Referral to other libraries is advised when desired materials are not housed in the FSC collections, e.g.:
- Children’s Literature/Stories to a public library.
- Travel and genre fiction to a public library.
- In-depth local history to the public library of that area, also the historical society of the community.
- In-depth legal materials to a legal library.
Restrictions on Service
The patron is shown how to conduct research and how to use reference materials. It is the responsibility of the patron (except for directional and ready reference information) to find specific information.
- No searching is done for puzzles, quizzes, etc. Assistance will consist of pointing out the material that may have information.
- Telephone reference will be limited to answers to direct questions. The patrons are encouraged to come and use all the resources of the library. The reference librarian when exceptionally busy, may encourage a patron to call back to retrieve requested information.
- Patrons do their own photocopying.
- Patrons compile their own bibliographies.
Reference Materials
Reference materials do not circulate except to a faculty member who must obtain the approval of a reference librarian. Each item must be checked out at the circulation desk.
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