Library About the Library

Library Mission

Voskuyl Library fosters a culture of scholarly, spiritual, and personal growth by providing learning spaces, resources, and services to the Westmont community.

Library Vision 

The Voskuyl Library employs innovative, skilled, and professional staff to promote academic, personal, and spiritual growth through our programming and services. We stay current in our field, incorporate new ideas for effective results, and contribute to Westmont and the larger community. We train and mentor student workers to make a meaningful contribution to the health of the library, and guide them in developing workplace skills for life after graduation. We are flexible and compassionate leaders, collaborators, and teachers who serve our community and demonstrate God’s love in all our interactions and endeavors.

The Voskuyl Library provides comfortable, welcoming, and safe spaces that encourage community, scholarship, and contemplation. These spaces accommodate the various ways our community members learn and engage with ideas. The library is a student-centered place where information is easily accessible, and where expert librarians and library staff support the community’s information needs. The Voskuyl Library acquires, provides, and promotes ready access to quality resources in a focused, understandable, and usable manner to students, faculty, staff, and the larger Westmont community. We support the diverse information needs of our community by providing access to a collection of resources that represent many voices and perspectives. As appropriate, we use emerging technology to better meet the information needs of our community.

The Voskuyl Library leads information literacy initiatives on campus and provides instruction and services to meet and support our community’s information needs. In particular, we equip students with knowledge and skills for lifelong learning. We teach students to form good practices and habits around information use, to read and think critically about information, and to engage with and contribute to our world’s ever-growing body of knowledge and ideas.

Library Values

Service, Hospitality, Collaboration, Excellence, Adaptability, Inquiry, Christ-likeness.

Program Learning Outcomes (PLOs)

1. Students will ask research questions and develop claims that are meaningful and manageable at an undergraduate level.
2. Students will find relevant sources for their research needs using effective and appropriate strategies.
3. Students will assess the quality of each source through a rhetorical framework (audience, purpose, genre) and evaluate its relevance to their research claim.
4. Students will effectively integrate sources into their own writing (summarizing, paraphrasing, quoting) while acknowledging the ideas and intent of the original author/s.

Key Questions

1. How can Voskuyl Library become a leader for information literacy initiatives and a vibrant center for student learning on campus?
2. How does Voskuyl Library fully develop library faculty who are integrated into Westmont's academic programs and who enhance the reputation of Westmont by engaging in meaningful service and outreach to the profession and local communities?
3. How does Voskuyl Library develop and sustain the personnel, resources, and services essential for a top-tier liberal arts college?

Lower Level - 1

• College Archives and Special Collections
• Children's Literature Collection
• Print Periodicals Collection
• Quiet Study Area (after 6 pm)
• Information Technology Offices

Main Level - 2

• Circulation Desk
• Conference Room (VL 216)
• Current Periodicals
• Faculty Authors Collection
• Instruction Lab (VL 214)
• IT Help Desk
• Learning Commons Computers & Printers
• MediaScape Study Rooms
• Reference Books
• Walk Stations
• Wright Collection
• Writer's Corner 

Upper Level - 3

• Circulating Books
• Classroom (VL 307)
• Disability Services
• Dubbing Room
• Faculty Cubicles
• Information Technology Offices
• Montecito Room
• Oversize Books
• Study Rooms