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VIVA: Hollins University Featured Member Library

Virginia's Academic Library Consortium

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VIVA Featured Member Library: Hollins University, Wyndham Robertson Library

An interview with Luke Vilelle, University Librarian, on February 6, 2017

Hollins University

What are three points of pride in your library?

  • Hollins students have given the library the highest satisfaction score on campus in every biennial satisfaction survey conducted since 2008. It’s a credit to not only our full-time staff, but also all of our student assistants.
  • We respond to community needs and requests. Recent examples include the addition of tabletop lamps with electrical and USB outlets; making phone chargers available for check-out; extending checkout periods and removing late fees for most of our book collection; and conducting usability testing for our website redesign.
  • Our library staff is incredible and integrates themselves into the life of the campus in so many ways. From co-chairing a Hollins Heritage Committee sub-committee (researching the role of slavery and African-Americans in campus history), to partnering with faculty on a digitization project to make grave marker images more accessible to students, to collaborating with faculty in the classroom and then assessing subsequent student learning outcomes, our people stretch themselves to further the mission of the library and Hollins.

What is the most popular spot in the library for users?

  • Our beautiful, light-filled building contains a wide variety of attractive spaces, and it’s tough to pick the most popular. Students working on long-term projects, or who just want their own quiet space, like to reserve (and then personalize!) a study carrel for the semester. Groups congregate in both our recently refurbished Reading Room on the first floor and our second-floor balcony that overlooks the Reading Room. The Writing Center and Quantitative Reasoning Center, which moved into a newly constructed space in the library in 2015, are popular destinations, as is our evening coffee shop.

Which VIVA resource or service do we value the most, and why?

  • The EBSCOHost package is tough to beat – with the breadth of subjects covered and access to full text, it’s usually our go-to resource. The VIVA Interlibrary Loan service is also critical to our community: knowing we can get material (and quickly!) from the University of Virginia or Virginia Tech or anywhere else within the consortium is a boon to student and faculty research.