Library staffers at Bucks County Community College (BCCC) have been providing the gifts of reading, knowledge and curiosity to students and residents alike for 60 years.
“Our mission at the library is to serve the people of Bucks County: to enrich their lives, advance their careers and enable them to become lifelong learners and more responsible citizens,” says Kelly Deeny, interlibrary loan/records library technician.
The library is located on the main Newtown Campus at 275 Swamp Road in Newtown. It opened to students on Sept. 29, 1965, as part of a sweeping movement to increase access to higher education across the nation.
The library was briefly housed in what is now Pemberton Hall before moving to the current building in 1972. Attached to the building is the Zlock Performing Arts Center, which hosts events, lectures and performances for the college and community.
This library's collections include more than 150,000 print books and periodicals, a diverse multimedia collection and databases containing 20,000-plus electronic journals, 2,000 electronic books, 500 electronic reference titles, about 6,000 streaming videos and more than a million art images.
In celebration of the library’s 60th anniversary, Kelly recently assembled a presentation about Lester Minkel, the college’s first librarian.
“Born in Iowa, Lester Minkel broke from the family’s farming tradition to pursue an education, and established a reputation as a beloved educator, friend and family man who loved to travel and cook,” she explains.
His achievements as librarian include the purchase of reference books displayed at the 1964 World’s Fair by the American Library Association, and partnering with the Bucks County Free Library.
The 28 librarians, technicians and assistants now on staff are passionate about information literacy and provide resources to ensure Bucks County residents can find, retrieve, evaluate and use information ethically and efficiently.
For example, curious researchers can find the library’s guide to the CRAAPP test, a tool used to evaluate the dependability of web sources and scholarly articles. The test encourages users to consider a source’s currency, reliability, authority/accuracy, purpose and point of view to determine if it is a proper resource. Additionally, the website features information available to the public about how to properly cite sources in a number of different formats.
The library also hosts weekly events, such as Meditation in the Library on Wednesday afternoons, and holds regular exhibitions open to the public. Recent topics have included a history of wooden utensils and tools, a road trip to catalog the independent bookshops of New Jersey and the Bucks In Time Archival Project. This project, helmed by the entire BCCC library team over the course of several events, asked students to anonymously answer what they enjoyed most about their Bucks' experience. The answers were then compiled into a file now available in the archives. They hope to make this a yearly project to go along with their celebration of Family History Month each October.
Library services extend far beyond the walls of the Newtown building.
“Extension libraries on the Lower and Upper Bucks campuses received new facilities in 2007 (Lower Bucks) and 2010 (Upper),” Kelly says. “The Library has supported the College's Virtual Campus since the inception of the online learning program in the early 1990s, and now provides extensive online collections and services.”
Archival photos are displayed at the BCCC Library in Newtown to commemorate its 60th anniversary.