Frohring Library: A Message from Head Librarian Elisabetta Morani

Dear students, alumni, and members of the JCU community,

This is a special year for John Cabot University, as we are celebrating our 40th Anniversary!

Throughout these years, the University has steadily grown, both in worldwide academic prestige and in student numbers. The Frohring Library has always done its best to keep pace with these developments. Known over the years for its unflinching dedication to John Cabot’s students and alumni, it has especially increased its engagement in the last years, consolidating its relationships and creating long-lasting ties with the students as well as the faculty members.

In the past year alone, the Frohring Library was able to offer 88 library instruction sessions in collaboration with JCU professors, addressing the research needs of more than half of the enrolled students.

Library print collections have reached over 30,000 items, but the most remarkable progress was for digital resources. Faculty and students now have access to a wide variety of databases, including over 30,000 different e-journals and 70,000 e-books, available 24/7 both on campus and in their residences.

Having grown very sensitive to the needs of JCU students, the Frohring Library is expanding its opening hours. Beginning on February 19th, the Frohring Library has become the first and only institution to remain open until 12:00 a.m. in Rome. Maybe even more important, it launched the “12 Library Nights” initiative, with which the Library remained open, with reference librarians on duty, until 2 a.m. in the period before and during final examinations.

Other successful initiatives, like the JCU Authors 2009 exhibit, helped build bridges and foster the cultural growth of the community.

We are incredibly proud of John Cabot University’s growth, and have done a great job getting to where we are now. We want to continue serving our community with relentless dedication, wishing to become the intellectual hub that this university deserves – an up-to-date learning center organized as a one-stop shop for all the students’ learning needs, including different kinds of spaces, resources, software and technologies, technical support, and reference assistance.

With regard to technologies, we will be implementing important innovations in the immediate future – a richer catalog, with integrated searching tools for print and online collections, mobile library services, cloud computing. Finally, we want our students to have all the tools, comfort, and space that they need to study, and our administration is planning significant investment to build additional room in the Guarini Campus.

Elisabetta Morani
Head Librarian