Library and Information Science Commons^™

Toward A New Service Model, Jim Alderman

Library Commons Project

The Thomas G. Carpenter Library works with a model of Reference service that is fairly traditional in most senses. The Reference Desk is staffed with a combination of professional librarians and para-professionals a set number of hours per week. When the current library facility was planned, the emphasis was on making more and more computers available to library patrons and to place staff near the computers in order to facilitate service provision. That resulted in a large lab of 129 workstations with a student assistant desk nearby and a smaller lab of 40 workstations with the reference/documents service desk nearby. …