Concordia New York

The Information Commons in the Scheele Memorial Library is divided into two parts—a reference area comprised of four student-access computers and the reference librarian’s station, and a work section made up of 16 student-access computers. Each of these computers is attached to the campus network, through which access to the resources available via the Internet are procured. They are also connected to several networked printers so that hard copies of online documents, research results, and other materials can be made. Finally, the 16 computers in the work quarter offer users the Microsoft Office suite of productivity tools (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) which enables the user to complete various classroom assignments and other tasks. Apart from this core group, additional public-access workstations are located on the lower level of the library.
 
Several databases are accessible on the units located in the Information Commons. Each of these workstations provides access to the instruments available from the Westchester Academic Libraries Directors Organization (WALDO), including the online catalog of Scheele Memorial Library and WALDO’s own online union catalog (these are the default options on the reference computers). The four computers in the reference section feature access to WorldCat, a utility which presents information on over one billion items held in more than 10,000 libraries around the world. Moreover, the library is constantly seeking new databases which may prove valuable to Scheele’s users.