East St. Louis Community College Learning Resource Center operates under a very unique model in the community college world. The college center provides a space and resources for students to attend classes in a variety of programs from Southwestern Illinois College, Kaskaskia College, Shawnee Community College, and Southern Illinois University Edwardsville; however they offer no courses of their own. There is no other community college operating under this model in Illinois and possibly in the country. The Learning Resource Center is in the unique position of supporting all of these students in addition to the Head Start preschool program and a charter school—it’s a very busy campus with a wide swath of information needs. However, the Learning Resource Center has been able to excel in this challenging environment.

The campus in its current form opened in 2000 as part of the Southern Illinois Collegiate Common Market, though the location has been a college since 1969. The Learning Resource Center itself underwent major renovations in the early part of the 2000s and reopened in August 2003. With the renovation, the space is much more inviting and welcoming to students and features a computer lab with both PCs and Macs.

One of the most unique items on display at the Learning Resource Center is a collection of African masks on loan from the SIUE Art Gallery. These items were featured in the Art and Architecture grant project.  Additionally, the Learning Resource Center has a special collection of about 3,000 volumes specifically by black authors and an archival collection of specific journals that are important in the African-American community, such as Ebony, Jet, and Drumvoices Revue.

Please be sure to stop in and visit the library; they are open from 8AM-9PM Monday through Thursday and 8AM-3PM Fridays each week when classes are in session. Between semesters, they are open 8AM-4:30PM Monday through Thursday and 8AM-3PM Fridays.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 at 11:12 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. # # You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. # #