Now that this is out of the way; you won’t hear me say that ever again.

Who am I? I’m Lakeland’s first and only (for now) librarian for the University of South Florida. My objective with this column is to present various library services and resources to make your studies easier.

But let’s backtrack a bit. Why would USF need a librarian? Isn’t there already a library on campus? There sure is, and it is where the print collections for USF Lakeland are located. My role on campus is to specifically help USF students, staff and faculty with their studies and research. The librarians and staff at the PCC/USF Library are still happy to assist you with checking out books and a quick reference question; I will take on the more extensive questions and will take care of teaching what is called “information literacy”.

What does that mean, more precisely? I can help you use the catalog and the articles databases or find that elusive piece of information you cannot dig up. I can help you obtain that article from that rare journal only found in Europe or show you an easy way of building a bibliography. I can show you how to evaluate a website and I can open to you the doors to the USF Virtual Library to showcase all the services the USF Libraries offer.

Otherwise, another big part of my job is to build up the book and journal collections in Lakeland as well as act as a liaison to the other libraries in the USF system.

Here is my contact information:

• my office is in LMC
• my phone number is 667-7737
• my email address is clw@lklnd.usf.edu

Let’s not forget either about the Ask-A-Librarian service, with which you can converse with a USF librarian by chat from morning through evening. This could be very useful if, for some reason, I’m not readily available. You can find the Ask-A-Librarian link at the top of the USF Virtual Library at http://www.lib.usf.edu/index.html.

Libraries, and librarians, have changed tremendously these past years, due to the expanding predominance of technology and the Internet. Hundreds of thousands of books are published each year. More and more information is also available electronically, either for free or for a fee. Libraries are becoming “scouts” which do identify, evaluate, and create pathways to the best information out there. Making a quick Google search may give you some results that may be “good enough” (good enough for what precisely, by the way?). Try our library catalog, try our databases, some of which you cannot freely access on your own. Libraries will take you over the lure of the Yahoogle mermaid to the heart of knowledge.

Catherine Lavallée-Welch
Associate Librarian

(this text was edited into a column for The Bull Pen, volume 1, number 1, August 2005, p.2. The Bull Pen is a student newsletter published by the USF Lakeland Student Goverment Association.)