Library Policies

LIBRARY POLICIES

Internet Policy
Circulation Policy
Materials Selection Policy
Interlibrary Loan Policy
Library Procedures

BRYAN COLLEGE LIBRARY INTERNET POLICY

The Internet is a worldwide network of computer networks. Libraries and research centers, companies and corporations, colleges and universities, and even government agencies all have computer networks containing massive amounts of information. The Internet connects these various networks, allowing different kinds of computers to "talk" to each other. When users from Bryan College link to the Library of Congress, for example, the result will be the same as if they were sitting at a Library of Congress computer terminal in Washington D.C.

The Internet provides access to books, articles, card catalogs, indexes, computer programs, information databases, government documents, news and weather information, and discussion groups on almost every imaginable topic. Worldwide email is also available.

College Handbook Standards

While the Internet contains a tremendous amount of useful information, it also contains objectionable content. Those who use the Internet at Bryan College must adhere to standards of morality set forth in the Community Life Handbook. Any intentional behavior, with respect to the electronic environment, that interferes with the mission or activities of the college or the college community will be regarded as unethical and will be subject to disciplinary action. Unauthorized or inappropriate use of computers is prohibited in the library. Such use includes, but is not limited to, the following: accessing or downloading pornographic or offensive material from the Internet, altering computer settings, and/ or modifying computer drives or system files.

College Acceptable Use Policy

All computer users are further subject to Bryan College’s Acceptable Use Policy which prohibits:

• using network for the transmission of threatening or harassing materials
• using network for recreational purposes, game playing, or other non-educational activities
• using network for commercial purposes or for-profit activities
• loud talking and other noise in labs
• eating or drinking in labs
• littering
• wasteful use of computer printer paper

Copyright Compliance

Finally, all Internet users must comply with copyright laws. (The following information is slightly revised from CSTCC's acceptable use policies and is used by permission.) Information located throughout the Internet is copyrighted according to the present US copyright law as it meets the definition of being fixed in a tangible medium. Once fixed in a tangible medium, a work is copyrighted whether or not it is registered in the US Copyright Offices.

Research Writing Lab Hours

Research Writing Lab hours coincide with the library’s hours of operation, during which times the lab is open for student use, unless it is reserved for library instruction. Library instructional purposes have first priority. Students have access to their Bryannet profile from these terminals--the Internet, Bryannet, home files, eStudent, etc.--as well as at the upstairs alcove terminals which are networked to the lab. Aspire students: your login can be obtained from your coordinator.

CIRCULATION POLICY

Borrowing Period for Materials

1. Books and audiocassettes: 2 weeks. May be renewed twice. Books checked out by Bryan College faculty and staff are due at the end of each semester but are subject to recall after 2 weeks. This rule will also apply to children or spouses of faculty and staff members unless they are enrolled as Bryan students. In that case they must abide by the checkout policy for all other Bryan students.

2. Videocassettes: 2 days. No renewals.

3. Periodicals and reference: These are generally for "in house use" only.

4. Reserve materials: 2-hour checkout, unless otherwise specified by the professor. Although there are some reserve materials marked "in house only" by the professors, most of the reserve materials may be checked out overnight within one hour of closing time. All overnight reserve materials are due by 8:30 AM the following day (or at 2 PM on Saturday and 2 PM on Sunday).

5. Curriculum “Math Manipulatives” Sets: Math manipulatives may not be checked out by the public nor by students (with the exception of education majors/ minors). They may, however, be used by anyone (including the public [e.g., home school families]) in the curriculum lab.

Fine Policy

1. Videocassettes: $1.00 per day.

2. Reserve material: 50 cents per hour.

3. All other: 10 cents per day per item. Grace period of 2 days from notice date.

**Maximum fine per item: $10.00.

Lost or Damaged Books
In the event that material is lost or excessively damaged the patron will be charged replacement cost plus a $10.00 processing fee. Replacement cost is the current cost of the item. If the item is no longer available, the cost of purchasing a comparable item will be assessed.

Community Residents
As a community service, Bryan College makes its library available free of charge to area residents who have a valid, official picture ID. Rhea County residents who are 18 years old and above may check out materials according to regular checkout policy. Those who are under 18 may check out up to five books at a time if they are enrolled in one of the local high schools or home school. Students enrolled in Chattanooga State's Rhea County extension may check out up to five books at a time. No materials will be checked out to non-Bryan students who owe fines.

It must be understood that Bryan College library exists primarily to serve the students and faculty of Bryan College. This being the case, the library reserves the right to place additional restrictions on the use of our library by non-students. This may be necessary, for example, if Rhea County residents who are students at other colleges place a heavy drain on our resources.

MATERIALS SELECTION POLICY

Introduction

The Bryan College library is the primary information resource center for the support of the curriculum of the college. Although the library serves the community and various schools in the area, materials will be selected primarily with the curricular needs of Bryan College students and faculty in mind.

Information resources are currently provided in a variety of formats including, but not limited to:

1. On-line access to indexes, abstracts, and full-text articles.

2. CD-ROMs providing indexes, abstracts and full-text articles.

3. Books and periodicals in hard copy and electronic form.

4. Microform (books and periodicals).

5. Other: audio-visual equipment or resources to view/read library material.

Criteria for Selection

Many factors must be taken into consideration and balanced in the process of materials selection:

--Cost of the materials.

--Various departmental needs (for example, English, History and Bible departments generally need greater library resources than Science, Math or Accounting departments.)

--Weaknesses of the various segments of the library collection in relation to departmental needs.

--Level of collection development appropriate for each area (for example, the collection for Teacher Education should reflect much more breadth and depth than for Art, because Bryan offers a major in Teacher Education whereas there are only a few courses taught in Art).

--Subjective evaluation of the value of the material (as determined by standard bibliographies (e.g. Books for College Libraries), reviews (Choice, LJ, etc.), faculty input, and librarian judgment.

--Significance of the author in his/her field (e.g. Calvin, Luther, Hemingway, Tolstoy, Einstein, Darwin, Sartre, Kant, Dewey, etc.).

--Quality of binding or physical condition in general.

--Availability in electronic format

--Size of potential user groups (some departments are considerably larger than others).

--Age or obsolescence (for example, materials in science and computer science tend to be outdated much faster than those in literature and theology.)

--Availability of materials via interlibrary loan (many reference works or AV materials are not available on interlibrary loan.)

--The development of new programs.

--Interlibrary loan demand, based on student/ faculty requests.

Not all of the factors are of equal weight, but all must be taken into consideration and balanced in the process of collection development. Primary considerations will be the material's relevance to the curriculum and needs of the students and faculty.

Faculty input is an important part of the collection development process and is strongly encouraged. However, since 1) the librarians are in the best position to observe the quality and balance of the entire collection as a whole, 2) the director is responsible for the quality and balance of the collection, and 3) the director is responsible for remaining within the limits of the library budget, the professional library staff retains final authority and responsibility for the selection and purchase of materials.

Periodical Selection

In addition to the general materials selection criteria listed above, a major consideration for periodical selection will be indexing. As a general rule, our library will only purchase periodicals indexed in one of the indexes we own or subscribe to. Periodicals that are requested by various departments but not indexed in any known index must be paid for by the department requesting the title.

For periodical selection, priority will be given to those periodicals indexed by one of our indexes. Indexes are usually the first resort for patrons who need information from periodicals; therefore, it is to our advantage to have current subscriptions to as many of the titles featured in these indexes as possible.

Gifts

Since the quality of materials is not dependent on whether the materials are purchased or donated, the library welcomes donations. The same selection criteria used for purchases will apply to gifts as well. Gifts will be accepted only with the understanding that the library may keep or dispose of them as it sees fit. When someone wants to donate books, the library must first find out if the donor intends to take a tax deduction. If he does not, the library will accept the donation and later determine which books are to be cataloged and which are to be sold. The donor will not be given a record of the number of books donated. If the donor intends to take a tax reduction, he or she must first supply the Library with an itemized list of the intended donation. The library will check the online catalog and accept only those books that we intend to catalog. A list of those books will be kept on file for two years (see IRS form 8282).

De-Acquisitions

Weeding is the process of removing materials that are no longer useful in support of the library's mission. There are numerous reasons why material may no longer support the mission:

1. It may be obsolete and with little or no historical value.

2. Even if not obsolete, it may have been replaced or superseded by more current material.

3. The classes for which the material was purchased may no longer be offered (this, however, does not mean that material would automatically be discarded without taking other factors into account).

4. The physical condition of the material may be beyond repair and no longer usable.

Weeding is an important part of the total acquisition process for at least two fundamental reasons. Materials acquisition requires that the collection be evaluated with regard to strengths and weaknesses relative to the college's curriculum. The process of collection evaluation requires that irrelevant and/or obsolete material be removed so that the evaluator is less likely to think the collection contains more useful information that it actually has.

Weeding is also important to the educational process. The library strives to present the most reliable, accurate information available. Even if a library has obsolete material, students are likely to use it, believing the material to be reliable, when in fact the information has changed or has proven to be inaccurate.

Some of the same criteria for material selection can also be used for de-acquisition (see "Criteria" above).

Intellectual Freedom and Censorship

The educational process demands that students and faculty have access to, and interact with, a wide variety of viewpoints. Intellectual honesty demands that scholars interact directly with primary sources and not rely simply on summaries, opinions or reviews of those sources. This being the case, it is essential that a quality academic library contain information from a wide variety of perspectives, even those considered to be controversial. Materials deemed necessary for inclusion will often represent political, moral and religious views that are in opposition to positions taken by Bryan College faculty and administration. Similarly, literary or artistic expression may contain written or graphic depictions that may be offensive to Bryan College faculty, administration, or constituents.

This does not mean, however, that all such material is necessarily appropriate to the educational mission of Bryan College. Complaints concerning library materials should be submitted to the director, who will review and discuss the objections with the patron based on collection development criteria and eventually make a determination.

If the director decides not to remove the material, and if the patron wishes to pursue the matter further, he or she will be invited to present his/her case before the library committee. The director will abide by the ruling of the committee.

If the library committee does not remove the material, and the patron is still not satisfied, the complaint should be appealed to the academic vice president. While there is nothing to prevent the patron from pursuing the matter further to the president and ultimately to the board of trustees, the decision of the academic vice president would normally be considered to be final.

INTERLIBRARY LOAN POLICY

In our age of information explosion, no library will contain all of the materials that may be requested by its patrons. Interlibrary loan helps to fill this gap. It is important, however, that the library and the administration understand that interlibrary loan cannot be used to avoid responsibility for developing our own collection.

Bryan students (or faculty/staff member) may borrow a maximum of 10 books at a time through interlibrary loan. Books are borrowed without charge to the student. There is a $0.10 per page charge for periodical articles to help defray general interlibrary loan expenses and to discourage students from requesting unneeded materials simply to store in their files. Interlibrary loans will be requested for non-Bryan patrons for a service charge of $3.00 per request for books and $0.10 per page for articles. Once an article has been ordered, the charge has been incurred and is due regardless of whether the patron later decides he or she no longer needs the information. (Interlibrary loan services for community residents are also available through Dayton’s public library.)

Books, photocopies of articles and some audio-visual materials are loaned to other libraries without charge. (We do reserve the right, however, to charge libraries that charge us). Reference material and videocassettes are not generally loaned, but exceptions may be made at the discretion of the reference librarian or the director. Materials will generally be loaned for 30 days from the time they are shipped with one two-week renewal allowed.

Patrons with overdue interlibrary loan materials will be charged $1.00 per day, per book for up to seven days. If a patron has a book overdue for more than seven days, his or her interlibrary loan privileges will be terminated for the rest of the semester. Each interlibrary loan book will have a paper band around it notifying the patron of these specifications. Our library will pay replacement costs and processing fees for any materials loaned from another library and not returned by a Bryan patron. We will then attempt to recover the charges from that patron.

All requests for photocopies will comply with copyright laws and guidelines. We reserve the right to refuse any request that, in our opinion, violates these laws and guidelines.

LIBRARY PROCEDURES

Checking out materials

Bring your materials and your student ID card to the front desk. The desk attendant will scan your card and your materials. A stamp in the back of the book reminds you of the due date.

Borrowing period

Books – 2 weeks

Videos – 2 days

Magazines, newspapers, and reference books (like encyclopedias) cannot be checked out.

Returning materials

To return materials, drop them in silver drop box outside the library, along the parking lot, or inside the library at the front desk.

Due date courtesy reminders

Two or three days before your materials are due, you will receive an email reminder listing the items you have checked out to your account. If you wish to renew the items for another two weeks, simply click “Reply” and type “Please renew” in the message box. Then click “Send.” Your materials will be renewed for another two-week period.

If you do not need the materials any longer, simply return them to the drop box.

Borrowing from other libraries

Bryan College students and faculty have access to approximately 4 million published materials (books, journal articles, and some videos) through the college’s membership in a national program of resource sharing, called “interlibrary loan.”

Requests to borrow materials from other libraries can be submitted through the interlibrary loan request forms on our library forms page or at the front desk. (See interlibrary loan policy above for terms.)

Locating Materials in the Library

The key to locating an item in the library is the number on the spine of the book, which places it in sequence on the shelf. Books are arranged according to the discipline area from which the topic is of the book is treated (according to the Dewey Decimal Classification system).

To save you time, librarians and desk attendants are at your service to help you locate items. Simply inquire at the front desk, and someone will gladly assist you.

Reserving Facilities

Three study rooms in the library are available to be reserved for college-related and approved group functions (206, 207, and 208). These rooms can be reserved through the library room reservation page or at the main desk. When not reserved for group functions, these rooms are open for use on a first-come-first-served basis.

Internet access

Bryan College makes the Internet available to its faculty, staff and students without charge.

Bryan College students, faculty and staff who are doing college-related research have priority in using library computers. Library staff may ask persons not doing college-related research to yield those computers. All users must comply with the Bryan College Library Internet Policy.