Steely Library aims to be a campus leader in cultivating a sense of belonging. The library provides a welcoming and supportive environment, in-person and online, for all NKU students, faculty, and staff, as well as members of the broader community. In doing so, we support NKU’s mission and the library profession’s longstanding commitment to empowering learners to access, gather, and evaluate information.
Our work to support all NKU learners is evident through our spaces, programs, teaching, and scholarly collections.
For our in-person learners, we have a variety of spaces to collaborate and work. From our reservable study rooms to our open collaborative spaces, to our individual study carrels, we work to ensure students have the space they need.
Beyond these spaces, we also have specialized spaces including:
We work to provide student-focused outreach activities that allow NKU students to have fun, learn more about Steely Library, and connect with the great library faculty and staff. Examples of this outreach include tabling at new student orientation, supporting wellness through Crafternoons and activities in our Wellness Space, and hosting Finals Week Stress Relief activities during the last week of fall and spring classes. Steely Library also collaborates with student organizations and campus partners to host programming that meets the current needs of our students.
Beyond outreach activities, we also support several student programs that provide opportunities for learning, celebrating student research, and developing transferable job skills. These programs include:
We support our learners through a variety of teaching, ranging from individual and personalized Research Help consultations to more formal teaching in courses through information literacy, makerspace, and archival instruction. See our Instruction page for additional details on this work.
As educators in Steely Library, we strive to be empathetic, relatable, intentional in our instruction and flexible, ensuring all learners feel included. Our hope is that any student who works with us leaves feeling empowered and confident about finding information, can independently evaluate and location reliable information, and are adaptable and agile as the information landscape continues to change and evolve.
Academic libraries build their scholarly collections through collection development. This is the process of selecting the resources needed to support the university’s curriculum, and research interests. While we cannot collect everything published, we build our collection with the goal of having materials that support our students, faculty, and staff.
Steely Library is also a leader in course affordability. We collaborate with campus to provide our students access to course materials on the first day of class. We do this through various initiatives including OER Instructor Grants, our Textbook Affordability Program, the UCAP Textbook Lending Library, and course reserves.
Faculty can also help expand our collection by recommending titles for purchase.
