Library as Campus Main Street

This chapter illustrates ways that academic libraries can engage with students to build and support campus communities. At the University of Tennessee Libraries, librarians seek opportunities for cultural enhancement of the campus community through creative outlets and activities that meet students in the spaces they frequent, both inside and outside the library. Librarians interact with students informally through contests and games, residence life programming, open houses, and street fairs that showcase the library as the campus main street.

Let the Sun Shine In

Sunshine Week is a national effort to promote the importance of open government and freedom of information. Although originally begun as a news media initiative, it has grown to include community groups, libraries, schools, governments, and others who are committed to civic engagement and access to information. For academic libraries, Sunshine Week offers opportunities to forge collaborations with campus and community partners, and to connect programming with broader student learning goals. This chapter makes the case for Sunshine Week as a mechanism for bringing together campus and community groups around issues of common concern, either as a standalone effort or part of a broader program focusing on civic engagement. It features a partnership between the library, journalism program, and donors at New Mexico State University but includes ideas and resources that are transferable to other settings.

Friends with Benefits

Students are a primary part of any academic library's community of users. However, students' voices are often left out of the conversation when libraries develop policies, services, and resources. One option for libraries which would like to consider students' opinions and needs more closely is the formation of a Student Advisory Group (SAG), a group of students who meet with library staff on a regular basis to discuss and provide advice on library policies, resources and strategies. Academic libraries can use SAGs for assistance with communication, collection development, focus group testing, and more. This article explores the logistics of creating, maintaining and assessing a SAG, along with concrete examples from the SAG at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). Student Advisory Groups have the potential to enrich any academic library's outreach and community-building efforts, and should be considered as an option by any library looking to become more student-centered.

Grassroots Outreach to Foster a Diverse Community

This exploration of an academic library's outreach efforts presents a broad overview of a range of initiatives aimed at fostering interaction with library staff and resources. These efforts are put forth by a variety of contributors from throughout the library's staff without a management mandate or day-to-day control. Although these grassroots outreach efforts cost little to nothing, they still act to effectively inculcate a campus-wide perception of the library as a forward-thinking, inclusive and supportive institution while generating a welcoming atmosphere for diverse users. This atmosphere in turn fosters a learning and research community that sees the library as an important contributor to its success. This chapter describes the foundations for this type of outreach as well as giving examples of a number of innovative methods Albertsons Library at Boise State University uses to provide meaningful opportunities for its users to interact with staff, services and resources in a way that cultivates a feeling of inclusion in the community.

If You Build It Will They Come?

The notion of the learning commons has become the benchmark for service delivery in academic libraries. Current best practices inform the broadening of library services by building relationships with campus academic support units to create a synergistic combination that redefines the research experience of our students by meeting them where they are. This concept expands the boundaries of the traditional library and calls for a reconfiguration of spaces, resources and services focused on supporting the learning needs of the community. The commons becomes a catalyst for new learning and interaction opportunities for students. This chapter will detail the process the University of Maryland underwent to establish this culture of inclusion and innovation in the Terrapin Learning Commons (TLC) which began as an empty new floor of the McKeldin Library (the undergraduate library) in 2010 and has since expanded to become a hub of activity surrounding learning spaces, programming, and a host of cutting edge technological services and resources.

Information Literacy Instruction for International Students

International students bring cultural and diversity awareness to an institution, but they also bring a variety of assumptions about how research is conducted in the United States. In developing an outreach plan to international students, the academic library should create services that cater specifically to this student population. By developing collaborations with other campus units, the library can foster academic success and at the same time build a sense of community for the undergraduate international student population. The chapter illustrates how through collaboration the library can become an active participant in supporting the academic mission of the institution, foster a sense of belonging among the students, and strengthen campus relationships among various entities, in particular, international students.

Making Connections, Building Community

In 2009, the University of Idaho embarked on an ambitious five year plan to redesign library space and build community through increased programming, intentional partnerships, and student engagement in the design process. Guided by quantitative and qualitative research in the form of LibQual, observational studies, and student surveys, librarians implemented incremental space redesign to create collaborative, inclusive, and community-based environment for social and scholarly pursuits. Librarians found that student-led initiatives were the most successful in building a community of library allies, aligning with the philosophy of the Communicative Commons, but also valued the related opportunities to partner with teaching faculty, student service organizations, and external campus partners. This chapter will seek to provide a balance of theoretical goals with practical steps for implementation, supplemented with examples gleaned from librarians' experiences in community building at the University of Idaho.

You Can “Like” It on Paper Too

In response to literature on libraries as space and the Millennial generation, this chapter speaks to the importance of the academic library as both social and communal space and how to communicate with today's college students. These case studies illustrate that students can be reached through analog displays, building an unconscious community between students as a group and students with the library. Community built within the academic library is discussed in light of these analog displays, the current library literature and via sociological positions. It is concluded that although it is thought that students want digital or online communication only, the highest amount of interaction with displays come from the traditional, analog elements.

A Renovation Is a Terrible Thing to Waste

This chapter describes the community engagement plan carried out by the Gottesman Libraries at Teachers College, Columbia University to develop a design for “the learning theater,” a flexible space aimed at the educators and students of the future. In order to design a learning space with the potential to inspire innovative use and cutting edge research, library staff conducted outreach and events to involve faculty, students, staff, and other stakeholders in generating use cases and ideas. These activities included immersive full day design events, shorter format design events, lectures, targeted collection development, and multimedia creation.

Peer-to-Peer Outreach and Promotion

This chapter offers both examples and recommendations for involving undergraduate students in academic library outreach efforts. Librarians at Gustavus Adolphus College employ a variety of methods for connecting with undergraduate students through their peers. Specifically, an internship program is described, along with initiatives developed through collaboration with student organizations on campus. In addition, the relationship between outreach efforts and the educational mission of academic libraries is discussed.