Love Your Library

Libraries are hubs for information and ideas. Aldrich library is such a hub for Episcopal students and faculty in both its physical and digital space. While our physical space is well used and loved by community members, our digital resources aren’t always placed in the spotlight. February is Love Your Library Month, and I’m excited to share some of our digital resources that deserve lots of love!

Being new to Episcopal this year, one of my priorities in the library has been to get to know the resources we have available, so I can be poised to best connect them with appropriate students and faculty. Upon diving into the vast digital resources available through Aldrich Library, I decided to organize them within a new and improved library website.

The new site presents our digital resources in a visually appealing way, making them easily accessible to users. Resources are further broken down and described in more detail in each of the various content pages. I am currently working with faculty members in the different subject areas to add high-quality free collections to the site in order to build an even more robust collection of resources for students conducting research.

"Students don’t just have access to these amazing resources on campus. They are available 24/7 to Episcopal students via our library website."

When introducing our digital library resources to students, we discuss the importance of using reliable academic sources when conducting scholarly research. This is why we provide students with access to a variety of databases. Subscriptions to Gale Cengage, EBSCO, and JSTOR databases, as well as numerous other content specific options, grant our students access to academic publications that are not freely available through a typical web search engine. I love to share this video created by Ronald Williams Library at Northeastern Illinois University when students ask, “Should I use Google or library resources for a paper?”

Should I be using Google or the Library resources for paper?

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Students don’t just have access to these amazing resources on campus. They are available 24/7 to Episcopal students via our library website. To gain access to databases from home, students must access the Google document linked on the main page using their Episcopal email login. This document gives them the various credentials needed to login to each database from home.

The Aldrich Library site also provides access to NoodleTools, a research service that helps students properly cite sources, take notes, create an outline, and format the works cited. This powerful tool provides support for students throughout the entire research process.

Presentation skills are essential to bring the research process full circle, where students share their findings with an audience. The Presentation Tools page provides students with a variety of tools to create digital products, as well as helpful tips for creating strong visual presentations.

All of these resources are neatly structured on the Aldrich Library page so they are easily accessible at all times. Making use of this wealth of information to establish strong research habits is important as we prepare students for life in college and beyond.

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Tiffany Whitehead

Tiffany has been an educator for nine years and joins the Episcopal faculty this year as the Upper and Middle School Librarian. A lifelong resident of Baton Rouge, she earned her Bachelor’s degree in Education from Southeastern Louisiana University and her Masters in Educational Technology Leadership from Northwestern State University of Louisiana. She has served as the President for ISTE’s Librarians Network and was recognized as one of ISTE’s 2014 Emerging Leaders. Tiffany is National Board Certified in Library Media and was named one of the 2014 Library Journal Movers & Shakers. She was the 2016 recipient of the Louisiana Library Media Specialist Award. Tiffany speaks regularly at state, national, and international conferences on school library and technology topics.