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Minnesota State Community & Technical College
Diesel Equipment Technology Students.
Originally published in Resource Sharing News
May 2006
Minnesota State Community and Technical College (MSCTC) is comprised of four campuses in Detroit Lakes,
Fergus Falls, Moorhead, and Wadena. Agnes Lee and I recently visited MSCTC—Moorhead, and met with
Librarian, Perry Werner, and Library Assistant, Carrie Curie.
The library resides in several rooms of the campus. MSCTC—Moorhead offers its 2300 students nearly 50
career programs and the Associate of Arts (AA) transfer degree. The school also has 15 online programs for
distance education students. Popular nursing and dental programs join accounting, carpentry, criminal justice,
culinary arts and a diesel equipment technology program to make up just a sampling of the curriculum. John
Deere and Case IH/New Holland sponsor some of the training for students in the diesel equipment technology
program.
Enrollment at the campus has nearly doubled since the library opened 13 years ago. Some of the increase can
be attributed to the addition of the Associate of Arts transfer degree. As a former technical college, the
addition of the AA transfer degree meant the library needed to grow to support the new areas of study. The
collection at MSCTC now numbers around 3000 monographs, 500 audiovisual items, a periodical collection, and
a reference collection of 200 items.
The students also make extensive use of electronic resources available to them through the library. The
smaller campus atmosphere also means the staff has a lot of interaction with students. While we sat in
Perry's office (which he calls a hallway) between two of the library rooms, he had a friendly word for
all who passed through.
"This is a very child friendly campus. Distance education students and other students often bring their
children with them," observes Library Assistant Carrie Curie. Other perks are preparation of a daily
food service on campus by the culinary arts students. Once a week, the chefs-in training prepare a
reasonably priced buffet for the staff and students.
Perry monitors interlibrary loan requests, which help him make collection development decisions. He often
purchases books requested via ILL for their collection if he notices a gap in their scope of materials.
He says the students "appreciate Minitex service and find it consistent and timely."
Carrie and Kristen Larson, who is also a library assistant at MSCTC, attended Aleph ILL training in Moorhead
on April 25, so they are one of the latest libraries to begin using the new Aleph ILL system. Kristen
predicts this change will lead to a higher volume of ILL requests, and they expect to begin direct borrowing
between campuses soon. For more information, visit
the MSCTC—Moorhead Web site.