Students can rest easy knowing there is after hours help in the library for late night studying.
These students will be trained to be more helpful with computer and network-related issues, especially after hours when the librarians go home.
“Generally, we have librarians here until six or seven o’clock in the evening, but not after that because the number of questions drops off considerably,” said Victoria Swinney, director of the library and associate professor of library science. “It’s just a lot of effort to have somebody here if they’re not busy.”
Four students were hired and will begin training soon.
“If the program goes well, we might consider hiring more students for computer assistance,” Swinney said.
A large portion of questions the library staff gets are related to the printer or Wi-Fi, Swinney said.
“So getting some student workers in the library that have that training we thought would be helpful to the students in the evening,” she said.
This training is to provide more assistance in the library overall, but also to make the library more a center of learning.
“What we’re working on here is kind of piecemeal to something we’ll be working on all year, which is a learning commons concept,” Swinney said. “We’re looking at providing more help in the library to students and encouraging more active learning from the students. ”
Swinney also said moving the Learning Enhancement Center to the library helped.
Students like the new program.
“I think having the student workers be more technologically informed will help with issues people often have with the computers, printing, and photocopying,” said Alyssa Pearson, music theater junior.
Library officials are looking to hire a fifth student to receive this training.
For more information about this position, email Swinney at vswinney@okcu.edu.
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