Visit to Ventura College and Oxnard College

Dona and I continued on our college trek today and headed north to Ventura and Oxnard Colleges. Ventura has a new Library and LRC building and I was anxious to see it. The building is beautiful: the LRC is on the bottom floor and it is a large pit with a "observation deck" around the outside. Faculty offices, including parttime offices flank the perimeter. It is indeed a hub of activity...

I climbed the colored, aggregate steps to the second floor and entered the library. It is another example of a plan that embraces its environment: windows let natural light in and the west side of the building has a beautiful reading room that looks out to the ocean. It was unusually quiet which was unbelievable to me since there were so many groups in the library.

I spoke with Harmony Rodriguez, one of the Librarians who was working at the Reference desk and also preparing a faculty presentation on the Library Services. Peter Sezzi was doing a library orientation so I missed seeing him. Their pride in this library was evident...

I found a great "summary video" of the building of this library on their website:
It is a timelapse construction video that is great: Play RealMedia (450kbps Cable/DSL)

We also visited with Diane Moore who is the Dean. She took us out to the beautiful patio that has a great view of the ocean. Great vistas, great staff, great dynamics on the campus...

Then on to Oxnard College Library...what a contrast (and they are sister colleges in the same district)!




Clearly, this is a college in transition...(at least I hope it is). The library is scheduled for a remodel within three years and this is a good thing. The current building was built in 1977 and the library looks like it was stalled there. I had a great visit with Ray Acosta, the Circulation coordinator who shared information with me about the building plans, collection size, staffing situation. Unfortunatley I was there at lunch time and the only librarian, Tom Stough was at lunch.

Delois Flowers was also not available since (in addition to being the Library dean) she is also the college's evening dean, social sciences dean, coordinator of the Child Development Instructional Program (and she oversees the Child Development Center.) Amazing!

I felt depressed as I left this campus... Obviously this college has issues of funding, but the contrast with Ventura, their sister college was unbelievable.

When I got home, I couldn't stop thinking about the sharp contrast of these sister schools in the same district. I went back to their website to see what was going on. I wanted to look at their accreditation self-study (the link didn't work), looked at their administrative structure (page under construction) and check out what was happening ont he campus. I had a hard time finding the Library since there is no link on any of the dropdowns (but could find it in the Search box.) It is clear that the institution did not think it was a priority. I then tried to select other links, and many of the pages have not been updated since May of 2006.

Kudos to Delois for doing what she can...but realistically, this is what happens when you cannot "tend and feed" a library because you have so many other pressing responsibilities. It is remarkable that the "Dean of Student Learning" is also the eevening dean. She is spread so thinly... but then looking at all of the administrators, it is clear that it is a pattern...