The Long Beach City College library has begun a curbside service program which allows students to borrow textbooks and other resources safely for up to seven days at a time.
The program became available on Sept. 14, permitting students to pick up books and other resources either in their vehicles or in person.
The LBCC library has been shut down since March due to COVID-19, and has been operating online.
Nenita Buenaventura, Access Services Librarian, stated they “decided not to do curbside service at Pacific Coast Campus and everything will be done at the Liberal Arts Campus.” However, all library reserve textbooks from PCC may be requested for curbside service.
“Long Beach City College has one of the biggest reserve collections [of textbooks] in the state out of the other California Community Colleges,” said Jeffery Sabol, Library Technician Program Instructor. This extensive array of books helps a wide range of students get access to materials so they don’t need to buy it on their own.
In the coming weeks, LBCC plans to begin offering a digital version of books via the LBCC website at the students’ request to help with social distancing, according to Buenaventura and Sabol.
To prevent copyright infringement only one chapter can be requested from a textbook at a time. The library staff would “upload it to the file server and the students would read it, but they can’t download it because of copyright,” Sabol said.
Numerous precautions have been taken to ensure the safety of both the students utilizing the service and those working at the curbside program.
“When the students return the books it gets quarantined for three days before it’s able to be checked out again,” said Buenaventura.
Buenaventura hopes to cut down the quarantine of the books from three days to 60 seconds by purchasing “a quarantine machine” that acts as a microwave by sanitizing the books in one minute.
“We have a lot of contact with other people and their germs so we have been sanitizing. We have gloves, masks and everything else to prevent ourselves from getting sick and the students,” said Shala Copeland. Copeland is a student assistant for the library, and has been handing out library materials to fellow students.
Due to LBCC’s recent announcement stating classes will continue to be mostly remote learning through spring semester 2021, library services will likely continue to be online and/or curbside services through then.
Curbside service is only available on Mondays and Thursdays from 10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. and is located at the Liberal Arts Campus in the C Lot. Students must maintain social distancing of at least 6 feet and wear a face covering.
To reserve library materials and to be granted access for curbside service visit the LBCC library website.
For information on requesting materials through the LBCC library, visit: https://www.lbcc.edu/carousel/find-learn-connect-library-online-resources-curbside-pickup