Mission Statement of the Library
It is the primary mission of the Oklahoma State University - Oklahoma City Library to serve as the intellectual commons of the University, providing high quality resources, services, and gateways to information to meet the needs of OSU - Oklahoma City's diverse instructional, research and outreach programs. The Library's secondary mission is that of an information resource for all the citizens of Oklahoma through both direct access to its collections and services and by sharing these resources as needed with other libraries in the state.
In Pursuit of Our Mission ...
Whether assisting students, faculty, and staff in locating library materials that meet their information needs or directing patrons to other campus services, our primary job in the Library is to provide information. To facilitate this we offer reference services and teach both groups and individuals how to use the Internet, the library catalog, and online databases. As part of our instruction, we also teach you how to think about the research process and how to be a discriminating information consumer.
The Library also offers friendly customer service, quiet study areas, and group study rooms. In addition, for the convenience of our students, we provide several on-site services such as Ask-a-Librarian, Interlibrary Loan, the OK-Share card, color copies and transparencies - especially popular with students who have to do presentations for their classes. And the Library serves as a repository for faculty reserve materials and distance education materials.
Behind the scenes, we evaluate thousands of books, videos and electronic media each year and consult faculty, searching for the materials that will be most useful. Once we decide on materials, this process we call collection development involves maintenance of several tracking spreadsheets, invoicing, relations with library vendors, cataloging, organizing, and processing the item all before it goes on the shelf for use. At the other end of the spectrum, older materials are evaluated for retention and when necessary repairs are made.
Because technology is constantly changing - and much of librarianship these days is related to technology, we spend our spare time doing in-house training and self-education in an effort to stay current and ensure that we can help our patrons.
Each day, we notify students of any fines and overdue items they have, update campus holds, keep the equipment working, process magazines and newspapers for use, smile a lot and in general do whatever it takes to provide quality information services for a wide variety of users.
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