Oases Of Culture: A History Of Public And Academic Libraries In Nevada

Notes

     quarters, increasingly crowded as the faculty and student population grew, continued to serve for more than twenty-five years. In , the legislature appropriated $. million for a separate thirty-four-thousand-square-foot building that serves as both a student center and a library.The beginning of construction was scheduled for . wncc offered classes at Fallon as early as  to about  students , and a branch gradually evolved there through the next two decades.This unit did not,however,have its own library until , when one was located in Stillwater Hall.3 In  wncc received a $, gift from the estate of Alicia and Manuel Beck to improve the library at the Fallon campus.4 Mrs. Beck had attended classes at the Fallon branch frequently during the s. Library and media services facilities have been developed at the Douglas County campuses of wncc as well.All library branches are connected with other colleges and universities though the Nevada Online Catalog (neon). t r u c k e e m e a d o w s c o m m u n i t y c o l l e g e Betsy Sturm, founder of the college library at Elko, moved to Reno in the mid-s and had responsibility for setting up the learning center at wncc in Carson City before the division between the north and south branches led to the emergence of a separate institution—the Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno—formally recognized in . She became librarian under the presidency of James Eardley, when tmcc was just getting started,and faced the challenge of starting yet another community college library. Originally it was assumed that this branch did not need a separate library because of its proximity to the unr campus and because its programs were largely vocational. Sturm was instrumental in scrapping that supposition. Creative in stretching modest resources to their limit for nearly     five years,she once again engaged the faculty in assembling the resources .The unit was organized to be“a library and more,”acquiring audio-visual and data processing devices as well as books. By the time she retired in , the institution was often referred to by her name. In the mid-s the Board of Regents officially designated the learning center the Elizabeth Sturm Library. One of her dedicated assistants was MarthaW. Coon. Located originally at the former Stead Air Force Base north of Reno (the first home of the north branch of wncc), the first collection was jointly held by the college and a branch of theWashoe County library and housed in a former military mess hall. In – it was relocated to the Dandini campus on the hills north of Reno in the classroom facility later known as Red Mountain Building. It was moved three more times over the next twenty years, finally acquiring its own dedicated site overlooking theTruckee Meadows in . c o m m u n i t y c o l l e g e o f s o u t h e r n n e va d a The fastest-growing unit in the University and Community College System of Nevada is Community College of Southern Nevada (ccsn). With more than thirty-three thousand students scattered across the burgeoning Las Vegas Valley and in a dozen other locations throughout the southern triangle, it has faced formidable challenges in providing its clients access to education materials . For many years the central information units on the three main campuses—in North LasVegas (Cheyenne campus),at Henderson, and on West Charleston Street—were called learning resource centers because there was much emphasis on computers and other forms of visual aid to assist in the varieties of vocational and technical training the college featured. By , however, ccsn had      accumulated forty thousand books at the three campuses.5 In the mid-s the term library became more commonly used as the book collections grew and as budgets became more nearly adequate. Rose Ellis,director of the libraries in the late s,noted a distinct improvement in the literary skills and educational interest of the student clientele near the end of the decade. Each campus not only has built a core collection of printed material in the arts and sciences but also has greatly enhanced the services offered on the Web. c o n c l u s i o n Although Nevada’s library systems have made tangible...