CORE REQUIREMENT CR 9:

The institution, through ownership or formal arrangements or agreements, provides and supports student and faculty access and user privileges to adequate library collections as well as to other learning/information resources consistent with the degrees offered. These collections and resources are sufficient to support all its educational, research, and public service programs.

The Collin County Community College District (CCCCD) Learning Resources Center (LRC) is a District-wide system (Reference 1) administered through (1) libraries at the Spring Creek, Preston Ridge, and Central Park campuses; (2) extensive online services for students and patrons, both on and off campus (Reference 2); (3) associated teaching, learning, and informational resources, including Media Services, the Teaching Learning Center, Distance Learning, the Alternative Learning Center, and Digital Media Workshops (Reference 3). For further discussion of the CCCCD LRC, please refer to Comprehensive Standard P25.

CCCCD LRC facilities are available on three campuses (Reference 4). The Spring Creek Campus LRC is a 54,000 square foot building seating 400. The Central Park Campus LRC is 20,000 square foot complex seating 185. The Preston Ridge Campus LRC is a 10,000 square foot preliminary facility seating 140. A new 50,000 square foot Preston Ridge LRC will be occupied in October 2004.

The District libraries share over 150,000 volumes, subscribe to over 800 serials, offer 78 online databases, and provide electronic access to five thousand additional journals and 23,000 electronic books (Reference 5). Also available are 20,000 audiovisual items and 900 interactive multimedia CDs on workforce development topics. In 2002, the LRC Web site had over one-half million hits, and patrons used the online full-text collections to retrieve over 110,000 documents (Reference 6).

The LRC Faculty Survey of March 2003 (Reference 7) found that a majority of professors, across all divisions and District-wide, strongly agreed with the statements that the LRC sites have the books, journals, media, and computer equipment to serve their needs. District-wide, students agreed that the LRC sites have the books, journals, media, and computer equipment needed to ensure success in their courses (Reference 8). CCCCD students ranked their libraries significantly higher than did other community college students state-wide in the Noel-Levitz 2-year College Student Satisfaction Inventory (Reference 9). This item received the highest positive response of any of the 95 items surveyed.

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