• Library Services Policy
• Conference Calendar
• Journals and General Periodicals
• Legislative Update
• 1998 Annual Report

Mandate

The library exists to support the professional development of our members, the work of the Governing Council and its committees, and the needs of our in-house staff. Key areas addressed by the collection cover a broad range of subjects, including pre-service and in-service training, standards of practice, credential assessment, curriculum development and assessment, learning styles, mentoring, and legislative analysis.

There is also an archival function, to ensure that the history of the college is retained. This includes records of meetings, committee working papers, briefs to the government, and other publications of the College. It also holds records of Council and photographs of events and proceedings.

The credential assessment collection, largely inherited and updated from the collection at the Ministry of Education and Training, supports the work of the College’s evaluation staff. Portions of this collection reside in the library, while certain tools are housed directly in the Membership Services Department.

General Layout

The main library includes:

• a collection of 100-200 professional journals and general periodicals
• an additional collection of electronic full text periodicals, indexed and searchable from the library study desks
• a video section of training materials
• a provincial legislation collection
• government documents and Statistics Canada areas
• the main books and papers collection
• vertical files by subject, supported by subject bibliographies of the library holdings on key areas of concern
• newspapers, both in print form and quarterly on CD ROM, full text
• Internet connections to other educational libraries, associations and university collections.

Access to Services

Access and navigation through all of this is facilitated through several avenues. We have a full function on line catalogue of our own collection, and will be mounting it on the internet when the collections size develops. There are also six CD-ROM database services available. These are:

1. ERIC
2. The Canadian Education Index
3. ONTERIS
4. The Wilson Education Index
5. The Canadian Business and Current Affairs full text database
6. Canadian Newsdisc

For members in locations outside of the Toronto area, the library will be providing as many services as possible on the Internet. Listings of conferences, a listing of our journals, our legislation update, new bibliographies and video holdings are a few examples.

We can also provide mail out/fax/e-mail services for members who do not have internet access, or for services such as CD searches which are not available through the internet. Examples of these services are:

• print outs of searches, performed by library staff and sent out to the member’s work location
• articles from our journal collection will be copied and filed by subject. The contents of these files will be listed in our subject bibliographies and both the bibliographies and a selection of the articles listed in them, can be sent out on request
• updates on the status of Acts and Regulations as changes go through
• conference calendars
• contact information for other educational associations and stakeholders
• Some requests can be answered by email or fax, the delivery style depending on the nature of the request, the volume/format of the materials involved, and the timelines required.

Training and Assistance

Individual members who wish training in the use of the library are not required to give us any advance notice. However, if you are coming from out of town and/or wish to make the best use of your time, you may wish to call ahead. This will let us prepare for your visit and set aside a block of time.

For library services please contact:
Christopher Ball
Manager – Library Services
416-961-8800, ext. 241

Olivia Hamilton
Library Technician
416-961-8800, ext. 279

E-mail: library@oct.on.ca

College Library - Journals and general periodicals