Meet the staff at Frost Library on the Glendon Campus: Librarians Julianna Drexler, Anne McGaughey and Vivienne Monty; Circulation Coordinator Anita Milne; Circulation Assistants Aida Morris, Iryna Ostapchuk and Lisa Woodard; and Secretary Stacy Mechefske.
Named after former Ontario Premier Leslie Frost, the Frost Library is a bright and intimate research and study space, located next to the Glendon Manor.
Assistance for Faculty and Students
Frost is a “library within the Libraries”, with circulation and reference desks and a diverse range of materials available for use. Computer workstations, a scanner, a colour printer, and a laptop are available for study and research purposes during library hours. Inter-campus borrowing is especially important; within a 24-hour period Monday to Friday, books, journals or audio visual material in the collections of various Keele Campus libraries (Law, Steacie, Schulich, Scott) can be at Frost in response to a patron’s request.
Staff are pleased that Glendon students use the library as a hub for study and research, collaborative work and social conversation. Individual students work at computers or desks, while groups sit in central areas such as the lobby, close to the reference desk in case of questions, with their work and study materials – books and laptops – spread out around them.
The librarians get to know the Glendon students and keep tabs on how their courses and assignments are progressing throughout the year. They highlight the diversity of the Glendon student body: students from different countries speaking French, Spanish, English and other languages, and those from many walks of life – full-time, part-time and mature students, a number of whom study after working hours.
Library Instruction
Frost offers information literacy instruction for students, either course- or assignment-specific, as well as more general orientations to library resources. Some faculty already bring their students to the library for workshops, and the Frost librarians encourage others to take advantage of this rich resource. They have worked closely with some faculty colleagues and would welcome the chance to work with even more, building in several instructional sessions over the course of the academic year to show students relevant resources, monitor their progress and fit library resources to specific classes or assignments. Ask Vivienne, Anne or Julianna about some of their most successful collaborations!
Planning Ahead for Library Resources
If you let the Frost staff know in advance about library resources needed for your upcoming Glendon courses, they can acquire the materials and/or place them on reserve before the course begins.
It may be possible to place some materials (e.g.
e-journal articles or lecture notes) on electronic reserve, so that greater numbers of students can have access to needed materials at any time, from on or off campus.
Collections and Resources
Frost’s collections of 250,000 books, journals, newspapers, government documents, and audio-visual materials is housed on three floors (wheelchair accessible). There is also a significant collection of internet accessible materials.
As support for Glendon’s bilingual liberal arts curriculum, the Frost Library collects mainly in the following fields of inquiry: social sciences, humanities, language, linguistics, translation, and international relations, and the collection reflects the College’s bilingual nature. A newer field at Glendon is public administration, and Frost Library is making a special effort to build a collection to support this program.
Frost staff note the significant increase in patrons’ use of electronic materials: while many patrons use use the Library’s books, many rely also on electronic resources, especially when working from home or off campus. eResources also give convenient online access to materials that would formerly have had to have been obtained through inter-campus borrowing or interlibrary loan.
Some electronic resources we’d like to highlight include:
Érudit
An initiative of Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, Érudit was launched in 1998 to serve as an innovative means of promoting and disseminating the results of university research. At the same time, it contributes to the acquisition and development of leading-edge expertise in academic-publication digital publishing. Érudit is the site of dissemination of Quebec journals supported by the Quebec fund for research on society and culture. The collection covers a wide range of disciplines in the human, social and natural sciences.
Bibliography of Asian Studies
The online version of the Bibliography of Asian Studies (BAS), this collection references principally western-language articles and book chapters on all parts of Asia published since 1971.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online
This is a new title of potential interest to faculty teaching in many areas, profiled in more detail in the New eResources article in this newsletter.
Early English Books Online
This resource contains digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700. For more information on EEBO see http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home.
International Bibliography of the Social Sciences The International Bibliography of the Social Sciences is an essential online resource for social science and interdisciplinary research. IBSS includes nearly two million bibliographic references to journal articles and to books, reviews and selected chapters dating back to 1951. It is unique in its broad coverage of international material and incorporates over 100 languages and countries. Over 2,700 journals are regularly indexed and some 7,000 books are included each year.
Literature Online
This fully searchable library contains more than 350,000 works of English and American poetry, drama and prose, 175 full-text literature journals, and other key criticism and reference resources. For more information see http://lion.chadwyck.com/.
Source OECD Source OECD is the OECD’s (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) Online Library of Statistical Databases, Books and Periodicals.
Unique Resources at Frost
Vinyl Collection
Glendon has a large collection of often unusual long-playing vinyl records (LPs), mostly from the 1960’s, and ‘70s, available for in-library listening. By special permission, faculty may take LPs to class for the purpose of enlivening instruction.
In addition to the classical music and opera by well known orchestras and conductors, there are albums by folk musicians and a wide variety of spoken word recordings from artists including Ralph Richardson and Diego Rivera.
Glendon Archive
Librarian Julianna Drexler has assembled a collection of historical documentation about events which have taken place at Glendon. Documentation includes various formats: print, audio/visual, photographic. Faculty members who wish to consult this collection or contribute material are encouraged to contact Julianna.
Let Us Know...
The Frost librarians are always interested in hearing from faculty about what’s working well in the library and about what can be done to better support faculty research and teaching – so please contact Julianna at drexler@yorku.ca Vivienne at vmonty@yorku.ca. or Anne at mcgaughe@yorku.ca
