The Penn State Library

 

Today we visited the Penn State Library for our meeting of our Comm100 class. We all met on the steps of the library with Professor Nichols and posed for a photo before entering. When we first got inside, I was a bit overwhelmed (I’m not the best with revolving doors) by the size of this library. It was nothing like any library I’d ever seen before, for it is also the first library I’ve ever seen with an elevator and more than 2 floors. The librarian who guided us into our room of computers was very kind and patient with all of us first year students trying to take in and navigate this masterpiece of a library.

Once we sat down at our respective computers, our librarian guided us through the steps of navigating the library’s website. She showed us the ropes of finding basically any book, journal, article, magazine, or anything else we may need to use while we are at Penn State. I also learned that if the text that I need is not in the library at University Park, but it is in a library on another Penn State campus, I can have that text sent to the University Park library and I can access it that way. It was made very clear that any library on any Penn State campus is the same library, which in my opinion is extremely convenient.

After learning about accessing texts, we were taught about how to access databases to find any kinds of journals or any other texts we could use for research. Did you know that Penn State has over 700 databases accessible to their students? Neither did I!

Overall, the day in the library was a good one, I got to learn lots of helpful information, start breaking ground on my new group case study on the Ice Bucket Challenge, and I got to a part of a great experience with my peers. I would call that a very successful Thursday at Penn State.