This article discusses commuter students’ experiences with the academic library, drawn from a qualitative study at the City University of New York. Undergraduates at six community and baccalaureate colleges were interviewed to explore how they fit schoolwork into their days, and the challenges and opportunities they encountered. Students identified physical and environmental features that informed their ability to successfully engage in academic work in the library. They valued the library as a distraction-free place for academic work, in contrast to the constraints they experienced in other places—including in their homes and on the commute.

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Like other college and university departments, academic libraries are increasingly expected to assess their services and facilities. This article describes an initial step in the development of a comprehensive assessment program for library instruction in the Brooklyn College Library. A pre-and post-quiz were developed based on the curriculum for a required library session in an introductory English composition course. The quizzes were designed to establish a baseline for student knowledge of information literacy as well as measure the effect of library instruction on student learning. We also sought to evaluate the suitability of the Blackboard learning management system for assessment of library instruction. Our discussion of the benefits and limitations of this pilot project will be useful to instruction librarians considering using Blackboard to implement multiple choice quizzes as a means of assessing information literacy and library instruction.