Visit to Mesa College, Mesa, Arizona

Last week, I visited the Paul A. Elsner Library at Mesa Community College. IMesa is one of the 10 colleges in the Maricopa College District. It is a 128,000 square foot library and academic support center (including faculty support services, classrooms and college administrative offices.) It reminded me of Shatford Library in so many ways. It is a building that takes advantage of natural light and open space. It is clear that it was designed to accommodate a variety of learning styles and experiences. There are computers everywhere...over 325 work stations as well as wireless connectivity throughout the campus. One interesting architectural feature is that this library was designed to relect an open book. Marie Brown, the Instruction Coordinator, gave me an extensive tour of the Library as well as the campus. Her enthusiasm was so refreshing and it is clear that she loves this institution.


I spoke with the director Jane Mente and she shared with me the administrative perspective as well as the planning perspective. I was interested in their extensive materials budget as well as some of their unique collections. The Library has 53 databases, 36,000 E-books as well as a special collections room that houses their Southwest collection.

Like PCC, Mesa has a Library Technician program and we exchanged information about our planning processes as well as technology iniatives. Their Strategic Plan is called "Focus on Learning" and she provided copies of the 2002-2005 plan as well as the 2005-2008 plan.

I shared with her the work of the Technology Master Plan Writing Group and offered to send copies of our faculty, staff, and student technology surveys. She will share my blog with her staff and said she will follow along as I pursue various agendas this year. She is also interested in seeing the results of the IMLS technology and digitization survey which I am adapting for use for the California Community Colleges.