Visitors who aren’t affiliated with SUNY Oswego will notice an improvement while going to Penfield Library this spring: They may now sign up for a free library card to borrow books and more.

While SUNY Oswego students, faculty, and staff have always been able to borrow books and other materials free of charge from Penfield Library, that has not always been the case for all community members and visitors.

“We improved access by eliminating fees for visitor library cards and ensuring our policies were consistent,” said Access Services Librarian Sarah O’Shea. “We previously had many different categories of visitors, all with their own rules. It was confusing and frustrating for both the visitors to Penfield and our staff.”

The new policy lets all visitors receive a library card for free, and borrow up to 25 books, CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays for 30 days.

“These changes make the user experience much more welcoming for our visitors and more efficient for our staff. Although our primary user group is the students, faculty and staff of SUNY Oswego, we also recognize our role within the broader Oswego community,” O’Shea said.

Library Director Sarah Weisman pointed out that, since SUNY Oswego's funding includes support by the State of New York, “we make our resources available to the public,” Weisman said. “We provide a valuable service to the local community in offering access to academic research resources that are not available in the local public and school libraries, and the librarian faculty expertise to navigate them.”

Increased access

In addition to visitor library cards allowing the public to borrow physical library materials, Penfield Library provides the public with free on-site access to library databases, as well as computer and internet access. All a visitor needs to do is ask and a library employee will log them into one of two computers in the library set up for community users. There, the visitor will have access to search over 150 academic library databases and read any of the more than 500,000 ebooks in Penfield’s collection. Faculty librarians are available at the library’s Research Help Desk to assist visitors to campus with their research questions just like they would assist a SUNY Oswego student, faculty, or staff member.

“Any member of the public can come to Penfield to browse the physical collection or use the public workstations to access documents online through our databases,” said Cataloging and Government Documents Librarian Catherine Carrà.

Carrà further highlighted Penfield Library’s important societal role as a Federal Depository Library. “Federal Depository Libraries provide free access to government information to everyone. The program was established by Congress in the late 1800s to distribute government information to libraries throughout the United States,” she said. Sharing government publications this way is designed to support a well-functioning democracy.

Penfield Library has been a depository library since 1966 and currently offers access to government documents in print and online through its Government Documents and Information research guide, which is freely available on the library’s website. While some printed government publications can be found in a special section on Penfield’s second floor that can only be used in the building, others are scattered throughout the regular library collection and can be checked out like a normal book.

New government publications, though, are another story.

“Starting this year almost all government publications are only going to be published online, so anyone can access them from anywhere with an internet connection,” Carrà said. This makes the free public internet access in libraries like Penfield even more important going forward, as members of the public need access to information regardless of their ability to pay for a data or internet connection.

“Vision 4040 lays out a plan to elevate the education of the region and to ‘maintain and sustain our democratic society,’” Weisman said of the plan announced in fall 2023 by SUNY Oswego President Peter O. Nwosu. “Penfield Library plays a role in elevating the education of the region and advancing a democratic society by providing the community with free access to library resources and programming beyond what they can find in their local public and school libraries.”

Weisman also described some of the other resources and services that Penfield Library makes available to the local community.

“We provide the community with librarian faculty expertise in locating and evaluating information; local educators with access to collections and opportunities to bring their classes for library visits; campus daycare children with storytime in the children's picture book collection that supports the education program; and community outreach events like Maker Madness, where we facilitate K-12 students’ exploration of STEAM through hands-on exploration and activities,” Weisman said.

“We want to be as welcoming to [the public] as we are to our SUNY users, especially being mindful of Dr. Nwosu's Vision 4040 and its broader focus on our wider community and its education and success,” O’Shea said. “We want everyone to have a successful and enjoyable visit to Penfield Library.”

-- Submitted by Penfield Library