The Allen Community College Library has expanded its offerings — by hundreds of thousands.
The ACC library was recently welcomed as the 52nd member into the SEKnFind shared catalog by the Southeast Kansas Library System (SEKLS). Its membership in SEKnFind will significantly broaden access to library materials for students, faculty, staff, and the surrounding community.
With this new partnership, ACC becomes the third academic library to join the SEKnFind network, alongside Independence and Fort Scott Community Colleges. The move connects the college to a collaborative consortium of libraries that now collectively offer more than 820,000 items — including books, DVDs, audiobooks, and more — through a unified online catalog.
Virginia Shaffer, director of the ACC Library, said she is excited about what this partnership brings to both ACC and beyond.
“I know that Allen students, as well as faculty, staff, and community members, will benefit from having access to this larger, shared catalog. I’m also excited to be able to share our collection with a wider audience across Southeast Kansas. Everyone involved benefits from this collaboration.”
THE SEKnFind system, administered by SEKLS, is designed to promote access and resource sharing among public and academic libraries across a 15-county region. The platform allows patrons to easily search for materials, place holds, and have items delivered to their local or preferred library. With this addition, Allen Community College’s full collection is now searchable and available through the catalog.
“In 2008 we started building up the consortium with I think there were 11 libraries at the time,” said Jason Robb, SEKnFind Coordinator. “And since then, we’ve grown. The main mission of the consortium is access.”
One of the key advantages of adding a community college library, Robb noted, is that it broadens the collection’s diversity.
“The colleges develop a different sort of collection. Theirs is more academic. They have a lot more non-fiction. That gives all these public libraries access to that,” he said. “On the other hand, public libraries develop a lot more popular collections. So, it’s giving those college students access to things that Allen doesn’t have. For example, they don’t have a DVD collection out there anymore, but we’ve got tons of DVDs in the consortium. It sort of balances things out a little bit.”
ACC students can use their student ID as their library card to borrow materials from any SEKnFind library, eliminating the need for a separate card and making the system easy to use. “It’s all streamlined with our system. You just put a hold on the items you want to check out. The patrons can do it themselves from home in their jammies,” Robb joked. “If an ACC student is sitting in a dorm room and they want something from the public library sent up to the college, all they have to do is put a hold on it.”
THE ADDITION of Allen to the consortium is reciprocal — ACC students can check out public library materials and community members can check out ACC library materials.
“Each library still has their own rules of how long you can have your book and stuff like that,” noted Laura Force, assistant library director at Iola Public Library. “You can return books to any of these libraries as well. There’s a courier service with the state.” For example, if you have items checked out from the Iola Public Library and happen to be driving through Fort Scott, you can drop your items off at the Fort Scott library since it is a part of the consortium.
“You can also pop into any of these libraries — including ACC — and check things out with your Iola Public Library card. Or return items for new items there,” Force added. “There’s a lot of opportunities to check out books that normally you might have to wait for another patron to return. The libraries also use other parts of the Southeast Kansas Library System. They have access to special needs and talking books (for blind patrons). They also have access to children’s services.”
NEARBY communities that are a part of the SEKnFind consortium include Chanute, Colony, Fort Scott, Garnett, Humboldt, Moran, Savonburg, and Yates Center. For a full list of the 52 participating libraries and to view the unified online catalog, visit www.seknfind.org.
Though the fall semester at ACC has not yet begun, the library is already actively fulfilling holds, and students and community members can begin taking advantage of the expanded offerings right away.
According to Robb, the addition of Allen Community College to SEKnFind marks another step toward a more interconnected and resource-rich southeast Kansas.
