Academic libraries are the intellectual heart of a college or university. They are places where information is stored and accessed. The staff and faculty librarians who work there are experts at helping students learn to make sense of their information needs. Libraries are places where students gather to study and socialize. And there is something to be said for having libraries “feel” like a library.
With an increasing emphasis on assessment across all areas of higher education, numerous studies have been conducted on the impact of library use on student success. Nearly every one of those studies demonstrate a small but still statistically significant positive effect or correlation of library use on measures like retention, GPA, and academic standing. As most higher education professionals are aware, each of these measures has so many factors contributing to them. However, as LeMaistre et.al. assert, “any statistically significant impact in this area bears further investigation.”
LeMaistre and colleagues at the Nevada State College Marydean Martin Library “investigated the relationship between use of online library resources and student success at a small, teaching-focused, baccalaureate college” and found positive results (2018). (Notably, Marydean Martin Library received the Association of College and Research Libraries Excellence in Academic Libraries award in 2020.)
In another study, researchers at IU Kokomo collected data from library service points. Their results are summarized below:
“[T]he data from this study found statistical associations between library use and student outcomes. The results suggest that students who use library services will more likely persist in their studies than those who do not use library services. The study also found a statistically significant difference between library use and higher GPAs for the fall 2013 semester but, perhaps strangely, not for the spring 2014 semester. The difference in GPAs between semesters warrants additional investigation” (Thorpe et.al., 2016).
Elizabeth Sterner analyzed 15 publications for a review entitled “Impact of academic libraries on grade point average (GPA)” and found that “all studies, except for one, demonstrated at least a small, nonnegligible positive correlation of library usage on GPA” (2021, p.83).
So, yes, libraries – and especially library faculty and staff – are still necessary for academic success!
In an effort to offer you more full-text information resources, the Library made a few changes in our database offerings over the summer months. We hope this enables you to find more readily-available content through our all-in-one discovery service – i.e., the catalog – and in the individual databases.
Although PsycArticles is not a new database, it has moved onto the ProQuest platform so it will look different to those who have used it at Doane in previous years.
With the addition of these more robust databases, however, it meant we had to make the hard choice to cancel our online abstracting and indexing databases, which offered fewer full-text resources, in addition to other underused databases. If you have any questions about how we made this decision or what previously indexed journal titles are now available in full-text, please contact the librarians.
We welcomed Cheyenne Stillinger to the Perkins Library staff on August 1st. Cheyenne joins the team in a new role providing accessibility and organization of the University archives and special collections. In conjunction, she will be digitizing Doane's 150 years of written and photographic records while also assisting in other library projects.
Cheyenne comes to Doane University from Wichita, KS, where she earned her bachelor’s and master's degrees in anthropology from Wichita State University, focusing specifically on biological and forensic anthropology. With a passion for historical artifacts and information she also completed a certification in museum studies. No Nebraska newbie, though, Cheyenne is originally from the Omaha metropolitan area.
Throughout her undergraduate years Cheyenne was active on the WSU shooting sports team, the Lambda Alpha Honor Society and the Boot Scootin' Shockers dance group. While working on her thesis in grad school she had the opportunity to design several museum exhibitions at WSU, Kansas Aviation Museum, and the B-29 Doc (WWII Superfortress bomber) Hangar, Education and Visitors Center.
As you can tell, Cheyenne is enthusiastic about history and anthropology. We believe she is a great asset to the Library and look forward to implementing many of her ideas for engaging the University with the Library and archives! Please take some time to welcome her to the Doane family!
Information Literacy Instruction |
Course Reserves |
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Do you teach any courses in which students don't know how to search for scholarly literature? WE CAN HELP! Do your students have trouble evaluating sources they find on the Internet? WE CAN HELP! Do they struggle integrating sources into their writing and/or citing those sources? WE CAN HELP! The librarians are here to help you and your students! We will collaborate with you on the lesson plan(s) to make sure your students improve their research and information literacy skills. Contact your liaison librarian – listed in the right column – or any librarian to schedule a time for an in-class lesson. If your syllabus is too full to allow for this, we can work with you to create out-of-class exercises or assignments including:
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Do you have a single copy of a book or DVD you want your students to read or view? WE GOT YOU COVERED! Do you want to make sure you know which student has your materials at any given point? WE GOT YOU COVERED! Do you want students to have the greatest number of hours to get access to these materials? WE GOT YOU COVERED! We'd be happy to place any materials on reserve in the Library so all of your students have access. Simply fill out the course reserve form and bring the material(s) to the Library. (You also can fill out a paper form at the time you bring in the materials.) You decide how long the materials can be checked out by each student. Typical loan times are 3 hours, 1 day and 1 week. We can have your reserve items available for checkout within hours. Digital/electronic materials: The Library does not have an electronic reserves system. Online articles and ebooks from library databases can be "shared" by providing the item's permanent or stable URL. Please do not use the URL in the browser's address box – it won't work! |
Do you read a newspaper cover-to-cover on a daily basis? According to a 2020 Pew Research Center study, more than 2/3 of Americans use websites and apps from news organizations for daily news, though more than 40% of young adults regularly get their news from social media. It should come as no surprise, then, that the Library's subscriptions to newspapers and newspaper databases aren't being used nearly as much as in previous years.
In order to offer the most needed information sources while remaining fiscally responsible, the librarians are reviewing the usage of our current and historical news sources including the New York Times online. The Library has been providing university-wide access to this highly respected source since 2014 and it has been a popular resource for many. However, since the Library now subscribes to a database from ProQuest that provides up-to-date full-text coverage of this newspaper – though not in PDF format, it must be noted – we are weighing the necessity of continuing a separate subscription to the paper.
Because our usage reports are not granular enough to tell us by whom or why our electronic resources are being used, we cannot reach out to you individually to get feedback. If you are someone who heavily relies on the Library's news resources, especially the New York Times subscription, please let us know what impact this would have on your research. Your opinions matter to us!
Monday-Thursday 8am-11pm
Friday 8am-5pm
Saturday 1-5pm
Sunday 2-11pm
Special hours for holidays & breaks
will be posted.
Roger Getz
Director of Perkins Library
Jayne Germer
Learning & E-resources Librarian
Cali Biaggi
Online Learning Librarian
Tammy Roach
Interlibrary Loan Library Assistant
Cheyenne Stillinger
Digitization & Archives Specialist
Fine Arts & Humanities
Cali Biaggi
Science, Technology,
Engineering & Mathematics
Cali Biaggi
Social Sciences
Jayne Germer
College of Education
Jayne Germer
College of Business
Roger Getz