Newsletter

Spring 2024

Celebrate with Us

This semester marks 10 years of serving the Liberty University community in our nationally-recognized Jerry Falwell Library building! During that time, we have provided approximately 2,200 tours to nearly 34,000 guests. In addition to current and prospective members of the LU community, tour guests have included government officials from the Pentagon, visiting accreditors, donors, Hendricks Motor Racing personnel, members of the Council of Independent Colleges in Virginia, community members, local business leaders, architects, vendors, librarians from other organizations, and many other campus visitors! If you have never had a tour, stop by and view a 5-minute video tour on the Media Wall or contact libraryevents@liberty.edu to schedule a tour for your group.

While being blessed to serve the residential and online university community through a world-class facility, we have made some tweaks to our facility over the years to best meet your and your students’ needs and requests, which have included:

• Acquiring a lactation pod for students, faculty, staff, and community members who are nursing moms. (This is located in the hallway outside the Curriculum Library on the terrace level.)
• Adding more than 400 outlets (AC, USB, and/or USB-C) and two battery kiosks to provide ample power for your electronic devices. (One battery kiosk is on the first floor beside the media wall, and the other is on the second floor near the 220 group study rooms.)
• Providing over 40 additional whiteboards dispersed throughout the building to facilitate collaboration.
• Installing 8 water bottle filling stations that have saved approximately 365,000 bottles.
• Adding bicycle desks to provide an option to be active while studying in a quiet space. (These are located in the Terrace Learning Commons and have a view of the lake.)

As we mark this milestone, help us celebrate by stopping by the library between 10:30 and 11:30 a.m. on Monday, Jan. 15, for cake and coffee. Be sure to share your favorite library memories with us when you visit! You can also tag us in your social media posts with #LibertyULibrary10 or send an email to libraryfeedback@liberty.edu. Plus, follow us on social media throughout the spring semester for special giveaways and highlights of the last 10 years. You will find JFL on Facebook, Instagram, and X @LibertyULibrary.

Explore Library Resources

Over the past 10 years, JFL has continued to develop its collections to best meet the needs of Liberty’s growing academic programs.

In addition to overall collection growth, we have made a number of other collection enhancements to better serve you. Click on the links below to learn more about resources available to you and that have been added, expanded, or enhanced since moving to our current location in 2014. These include:

• Growing the institutional repository, Scholars Crossing, to over 17,000 items that have been downloaded around the world more than 12.5 million times. These items include 7,700 Electronic Theses and Dissertations published by LU students. Contact scholarlycommunications@liberty.edu to learn how you can submit your scholarly works to Scholars Crossing.
• Curating discipline-specific Research Guides that have been used nearly 3 million times. Contact your liaison librarian for any course-specific needs.
• Developing library and research FAQ that have been consulted more than 140,000 times.
• Developing a Beyond Books Collection of over 375 practical and recreational items for students to borrow such as jumper cables, tools, cookware, games, outdoor and exercise equipment, irons, sewing machines, umbrellas, and other gadgets that support our students in a holistic manner.
• Acquiring over 400 recreational reading titles to support students’ non-academic information needs and areas of interest.
• Implementing a Purchase on Demand program that enabled JFL to meet student and faculty needs more quickly by acquiring over 7,900 high-interest items requested through Interlibrary Loan instead of borrowing them from another library.
• Pursuing Evidence Based Acquisition models for e-books to provide access to more than 200,000 titles since 2017 at a fraction of the purchase cost so that we purchase only the most used titles.
• Supporting the university-led Inclusive Access initiative by exploring unlimited access and perpetual ownership of more than 1,200 e-textbooks and other course-specific electronic resources to save our students money.
• Migrating to OpenAthens as JFL’s resource authentication solution to increase security, privacy, and data management and to provide a more seamless single sign-on to electronic library resources.
• Transitioning to a cloud-based library system, Alma, that interfaces with a single-search discovery platform, Summon, to create a Google-like search experience for library customers.
• Adopting a digital platform to provide open access to over 600,000 items in the JFL Archives & Special Collections and adding several new special collections such as the Lutzweiler Hymnal Collection, the Mead’s Tavern Archeological Collection, and the Conservative Caucus Collection.
• Developing the Military Oral History project and recording 56 interviews as well as adding 12 additional interviews for the LU Oral History project.
• Adding almost 20,000 linear inches of materials to the Archives & Special Collections, which focuses on preserving the history of the university and related entities.

Utilize Library Services

Since moving into the JFL space, the library has continued to add or enhance services to support students in using information and ideas effectively, efficiently, and ethically and to support faculty in their teaching, mentoring, and research. Library services include providing research support and instruction, interlibrary loan services, discipline-specific liaison librarians, group study room and event space registrations, course reserves, and more!

Click on the links below to learn more about library services for you and your students that have been implemented or expanded over the past 10 years. Services since 2014 include:

• Answering approximately 125,000 research questions and creating a Research Support Center that has fielded approximately 59,000 of those questions since November 2017.
• Providing nearly 2,800 virtual research consultations since the service was introduced in March 2020.
• Teaching around 2,000 research class sessions, including 600 INQ 101 sessions.
• Hosting webinars and providing tutorials that have been viewed more than 400,000 times.
• Facilitating nearly 380,000 group study room and event space reservations for more than 956,000 hours of use.
• Adopting expedited shipping so that online students and faculty can have faster access to print books in JFL’s collections when they make a request through the interlibrary loan program.
• Becoming a member of the OCLC Express Program reserved exclusively for libraries with high-performing interlibrary loan services which enables us to quickly obtain article or chapter scans for JFL customers from other libraries who are also part of this select group.
• Implementing single sign-on for interlibrary loan services to provide more efficient access to customers.
• Providing over 80,000 items to other libraries; obtaining approximately 59,500 items from other libraries for JFL students, faculty, and staff; and shipping over 11,400 print books from JFL’s collections to LUO customers through JFL’s Interlibrary Loan program.
• Offering 33 summer story times through JFL’s Curriculum Library, providing a Christian-focused enrichment activity for an average of 35 children and 17 accompanying adults in the local community at each event.
• Hosting Pop-Up Library events around campus to engage with students and expose them to library resources and services beyond the JFL building.
• Implementing a Pick from Shelf service that enables students, faculty, and staff to request items on the browsable shelves from within the online catalog so that the items are pulled and placed on hold for easy pick up.

Sponsor Student Research

Research Week 2024 will be held April 15-18 in the Jerry Falwell Library. While it is fast approaching, there is still time to sponsor students’ research projects before the Feb. 16 deadline! Submissions can be for any of the following categories:

Residential Students

• Poster Presentation (In Person)
• Oral Presentation (In Person)
• Three Minute Thesis Competition (3MT^®)
• Performing Arts Presentation
• Juried Art Exhibition (Restricted to undergraduate students in the School of Communication and the Arts)

Online Students

• Poster Presentation (In Person)* OR Remote Poster Presentation
• Oral Presentation (In Person)* OR Remote Oral Presentation
• Three Minute Thesis Competition (3MT^®)*
• Juried Art Exhibition (Restricted to undergraduate students in the School of Communication and the Arts)

*Online students must attend in person to participate in these categories.

 Visit www.Liberty.edu/ResearchWeek  for more details, and email researchweek@liberty.edu with any questions.

Mark Your Calendars

Be sure to check out these upcoming live research webinars as well as recordings of previous webinars on the library events page. Although we record the webinars for those who cannot attend in person, students often benefit from the Q&A during the live events. We hope that you and your students will find these webinars to be helpful and informative.

Welcome to the JFL: How to Locate and Access Resources Through the Library Website!

Monday, Jan. 22 | 1 p.m. EST

Join us for a live webinar and Q&A session demonstrating how to navigate the Jerry Falwell Library website and how to search the vast array of resources available to support you in your assignments.

Creating Annotated Bibliographies and Literature Reviews for Course Assignments

Tuesday, Feb. 13 | 7 p.m. EST

This webinar will help students create effective evidence-based annotated bibliographies and literature reviews for course assignments. Students will learn to select and properly cite relevant, credible scholarly sources; analyze those sources; and synthesize and apply this research to engage with their topic.

Plan to Visit

The Jerry Falwell Museum is set to reopen in 2024 after the completion of its new space on the terrace level of the Hancock Welcome Center. In conjunction with the Liberty University Archives and Special Collections in the Jerry Falwell Library, the Jerry Falwell Museum preserves the history of the founding of the university and the legacy of Liberty’s founder, Jerry Falwell Sr.

Follow the museum on Facebook @JFM1971 for an announcement of the Grand Re-opening date so that you can plan your visit!