The Tuggeranong Town Centre Library

The Tuggeranong Town Centre Library is designed and managed as a joint-use facility of the ACT Public Library Service and Lake Tuggeranong College. It caters both for the educational needs of College students and staff and for general community use.

The joint-use arrangement provides considerable advantages to students of the College. Students have the opportunity to explore wider information environments through having access to the entire collections of all ACT Public Libraries, through the provision of free Internet services which includes the ACT Virtual Library network, and through access to e-mail and word-processing facilities. Fully qualified Teacher Librarians, in addition to ACT Public Library staff, further enhance the opportunities and services provided by the College.

The Teacher Librarians, with dual qualifications in teaching and librarianship, are members of the school’s total teaching staff. Teacher Librarians place a strong focus on resource-based learning and inquiry-based teaching. The development of critical thinking and inquiry skills is firmly embedded in the processes and practices of teaching Information Literacy, which is the principal role of the Teacher Librarian. Information Literacy, which includes Information Communication Technology (ICT) competencies - an integral part of the information literacy process - involves learning how to learn, and in a rapid and changing information access environment, this is the underpinning educational philosophy of the Teacher Librarian.

Information Literacy is a component of the National Goals of Schooling. It involves skills and abilities in learning not only how to find information, but also how to transfer that information into knowledge. Students are encouraged to develop thinking strategies based on an information process, skills to implement an information search, and ways to be selective and creative in the use of resources and information.

Welcome from the Library 2008.

Welcome to all our Year 11 and 12 students. Library staff members invite you to make frequent use throughout the year of our excellent joint-use college and public library. We look forward to helping you with your information needs and guiding you to become discerning users of information. All new students to the college will collect their library cards through Student Development classes and will also be provided with an orientation to assist in using the library effectively.

Eileen and Janice, the teacher librarians, encourage you to make good use of their expertise whenever you have assignments and need:

• assistance to locate a variety of resources
• guidance using the library catalogue
• guidance using electronic databases for journal and newspaper articles
• strategies to evaluate the quality of information
• bibliographic style advice
• strategies to reference resources correctly and avoid plagiarism
• assistance with computer applications software when processing assignments.