Becoming Hogwarts: Collaborating with external partners for a large-scale event series

Academic libraries regularly collaborate with faculty at their institutions for information literacy and reference support, but large-scale event series often require different kinds of partnerships. At the Scholes and Herrick Libraries of Alfred University in the fall of 2015, we hosted a traveling exhibit from the National Library of Medicine called “Harry Potter's World” and built an extensive outreach program around it. By collaborating more widely—with student groups, other campus departments, and institutions within the surrounding community—we were able to dramatically increase the reach of our program. This article explores lessons learned in that process and some best practices for external collaboration.     

Therapy Dogs in Academic Libraries: A Way to Foster Student Engagement and Mitigate Self-Reported Stress during Finals

More and more modern academic libraries are turning to student engagement activities designed to welcome students into Academia, join a community of scholars, and avail themselves of the full range of resources and services that a university library can provide. One unusual, but inexpensive and highly effective method of engaging students is bringing therapy dogs into the library. This article begins by explaining how therapy dogs differ from other types of dogs and how to counter objections to library engagement activities involving canines. It then offers a research-based rationale for human-canine interaction that is consistent with an academic library's mission. Next, the article addresses the planning/implementation phase a student engagement event involving handler/therapy dog teams, reviews the literature on successful programs at various institutions, and offers guidance to others seeking to initiate a similar program. A project of this type depends upon collaboration among faculty members, college students, support staff, volunteers, and the larger community. Finally, the article highlights results from a questionnaire administered to 449 students during a sequence of three “de-stress during exam week” events. Overall, the survey data suggest that: (1) social media was the most effective means of advertising, (2) students strongly supported the continuation of the event, and (3) 95% of the student participants considered interaction with the therapy dogs to be a means of stress reduction.     

Expanding Beyond our Library Walls: Building an Active Online Community through Facebook

This article demonstrates how Facebook, a popular social networking Web site, provides libraries with the opportunity to develop an outreach presence and information portal within an online community. While much of the recent literature examines Facebook and defines its potential use within libraries, this article focuses on the use of Facebook's newest feature: customizable Facebook Pages. In December 2007, librarians at the State University of New York at Buffalo began exploring the use of Facebook Pages to virtually reach out to patrons and market library services. Based on user response and Page statistics, librarians found the use of Facebook Pages provided a welcome extension of services and a unique form of outreach that reached beyond the campus community. Through a University at Buffalo Libraries Page on Facebook, librarians can update and inform students, faculty, and staff of new events, workshops, library services, and resources. Librarians at the University at Buffalo maintain an active online community that reaches more than 300 fans. Fans provide discussion and feedback regarding library services, offering a more interactive extension of the Libraries homepage. This article explains the design process, including the use of third-party and custom applications. Challenges, ideas, and user response in regards to the use of Facebook Pages in a library setting are also presented.     

Beyond Disciplines: Providing Outreach to Underserved Groups by Demographic

As more students, faculty, and staff from traditionally underrepresented groups enter universities and colleges, academic libraries must find ways to reach out to these groups in order to better meet their unique educational needs. In this article, librarians from two large public universities describe how they used data about their communities to determine which underserved groups might need additional outreach, and then marketed library tools and services to student veterans, students with disabilities, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students.     

Mind Your Business: Reaching the Small Business Owner and Entrepreneur Through Community Partnership and Programming

ABSTRACT

Small business owners and entrepreneurs have the potential to be a large user group for public libraries and are in need of many of the library's resources and services. One opportunity that can be used to reach this audience is by offering specialized library programming. In this article, the author describes a small business lecture series that was launched at the St. Louis County Library in 2012, including how this opportunity was identified, the process for developing the programming, creating a community partnership, marketing and evaluating the series, and other benefits that have arisen from the library's new initiative.     

Take a Paws: Fostering Student Wellness with a Therapy Dog Program at Your University Library

Therapy dogs are trained and socialized to provide comfort to individuals who are ill or experiencing stress. The following article explores therapy dog outreach programs in academic libraries by describing a successful venture at McGill University Library. Background, planning advice, assessment results, and recommendations are presented with an aim to inform those who would like to implement similar programs at their libraries.     

State of e-Learning Marketing: Results and Recommendations from a Nationwide Survey

Abstract

To better understand how librarians across the country market e-learning resources to faculty, a survey was distributed to academic librarians in the United States to gauge what marketing strategies were being used, how the marketing responsibilities were being divided, and what strategies were deemed successful. The survey’s results suggested that active, tailored marketing strategies which utilize the traditional liaison model tend to be the most successful. This study emphasizes the need for communication among librarians and includes recommendations for increasing the awareness of e-learning resources on your campus.     

Library Outreach Positions: From Planning to Practice

East Tennessee State University has a diverse student population of approximately 12,500 students. Recent statistics have indicated that the student body is bypassing the physical library building, including reference services, and connecting to online sources from off campus. With only six public service librarians whose duties include interlibrary loan, instruction, and other key library functions, librarians are limited in their ability to provide outreach to those students who might never enter the library. In this article, the authors describe the decision process in developing outreach librarian positions for the graduate programs librarian and the undergraduate student services librarian and discuss the specific services that these librarians provide to students.     

Reference Beyond the Walls of the Library: Interacting with Faculty and Students in the 21st Century

SUMMARY

The nature of research continues to evolve from accessing print publications in a library building toward retrieving information online, any time any place. Since patrons no longer need to enter a library building to access information, the social character of reference service has also changed. Demand for face-to-face reference interaction has declined, altering the traditional one-on-one venue for teaching information retrieval and evaluation. To develop new opportunities for influencing the information literacy levels of students, librarians at Northwest Missouri State University are creating outreach strategies that facilitate increased interaction with students and faculty.     

Better Together: Responsive Community Programming at the U-M Library

In the past seven years, the University of Michigan Library's programming model has evolved to be responsive and reflective of staffing areas of interest and expertise. Our team-based, iterative model enables us to develop responsive exhibits, workshops, experiences, and events in our community. This article explores our experiences in developing this model through the lens of some of our collaborations with the Ann Arbor District Library (AADL). Our approach to programming opportunities builds on learning by doing, building deeper, mutually beneficial relationships with other organizations, and continually making sure we are truly developing programming with our audience (our community) in mind. While public and academic libraries often develop distinct sets of services, collections, and expertise to serve their respective communities, successful collaborations can yield interesting opportunities for more effective engagement and programming. Our relationship with AADL has helped us to identify and better understand how we can connect our teaching and research missions with the interests and needs of the broader community in which we are situated.     

Health information programming in public libraries: a content analysis

ABSTRACT

Health information programs, defined as library programs focusing on health-related topics, are an essential way for public libraries to reach out to their user communities, raising awareness of and interest in healthy lifestyle, promoting access to quality health information, and ultimately enhancing health literacy of the citizenry. This study presents a content analysis of the health information programs provided by a large urban public library system in the past year, seeking to strengthen the professional understanding of how public libraries can contribute to health literacy improvement through effective programming, and help other libraries gain insights on health information program planning and implementation.     

To Infinity and Beyond: Reducing Textbook Costs Through Librarian/Faculty Collaborations

As subject and distance learning librarians, we have a special interest in supporting our faculty and their needs as they explore alternative and more affordable textbook options for their students. In an increasingly digital environment, there are a wealth of resources available at little or no cost to students. Unfortunately, finding these resources can be challenging and time consuming for faculty. This is where librarians step in. Through careful planning and collaboration with faculty, we can help transition course reading to online and open resources. Librarians can assist in this process by helping faculty identify appropriate resources, helping integrate resources into online learning environments, and providing support for student access to materials. This paper will describe this process from start to finish, utilizing our experience supporting a faculty member with an Ethnobotany course textbook as it was transitioned to an online textbook option.     

Beyond the first year: Supporting sophomores through information literacy outreach

The sophomore year is increasingly becoming a target of retention efforts, as universities and colleges realize that nearly as much attrition occurs between the sophomore and junior years as between the first and sophomore years. As a result, there is an opportunity for libraries to reach out to and target second-year students. This article presents a case study of a sophomore outreach program at the University of Puget Sound focused on citation management software. Our results suggest that libraries should pursue outreach targeting the sophomore population.     

Special Collections in View: Marketing and Outreach as Reference Services

Abstract

This article discusses the marketing and promotion of special collections in academic law libraries as complementary to, and a part of, effective reference services based in those collections. The two activities can share similar goals and be mutually reinforcing: good marketing can lead to better reference service and an increase in patrons using special collections; and better, more engaged reference service can lead to long-term interest and support for special collections among a library’s stakeholders.     

Library Marketing on a Small Liberal Arts Campus: Assessing Communication Preferences

As part of a newly created library marketing plan, librarians at the College of Wooster undertook a study of the communication preferences of students, faculty, and staff in early 2015. The results of the survey helped to develop a comprehensive picture of what library resources and services these constituencies are interested in learning about, as well as when, where, and how they prefer to learn about them. This article describes the development, distribution, results, and analysis of the survey, and highlights the importance of campus-specific library marketing practices.     

Hitching Your Wagon to the Right Star: A Case Study in Collaboration

In tough economic times, librarians are challenged to increase their instruction and outreach efforts despite shrinking budgets. This article discusses creating a mutually beneficial partnership with existing, successful campus programs to increase outreach efforts with minimal financial risk. Ten steps for creating a meaningful partnership are discussed. The author uses lessons learned from her own experience creating a collaboration with a first-year orientation program to illustrate the challenges and suggest best practices to help readers implement the model on their own campuses.     

Encouraging Better Graphic Design in Libraries: a Creative Commons Crowdsourcing Approach

A dearth of published literature about graphic design in libraries reveals that little attention has been focused on librarians' visual communication abilities and the impact of print and Web publications on users' interaction with library services and collections. This case study examines one approach to improving the quality of graphic design in libraries. Through a combination of social media and accessible cloud-based storage, Librarian Design Share, a crowdsourced archive of library-related visual materials, highlights exemplars of visual communication in libraries and makes designs freely available for adaptation under a creative commons license.