Trenia Napier

Reinventing Library Spaces and Services: Harnessing Campus Partnerships to Initiate and Sustain Transformational Change

Abstract Utilizing creative campus partnerships, alliances, and mergers, libraries can move from a traditional support role to a more participatory role that actively engages a university’s academic mission. Libraries, as centralizing, politically neutral hubs for information, can serve as catalysts for collaborative planning that paves the way for creating innovative campus spaces and services in conjunction with other academic or general campus units. By forging alliances and merging services and resources with campus partners, such as Information Technology (IT) and the English and Communication departments, the library can address student need and initiate transformational changes—changes that are broader in scope than those within traditional library functions. The case study in this chapter provides an exploration of the merging of library services with a writing center, an effort which was enhanced by adding an oral communication support service. It provides examples of what can be accomplished through visionary leadership and teamwork in 21st-century academic libraries, focusing on how student need and library use prompted institutional change at a mid-sized regional comprehensive university. The authors highlight the essential structural and operational mergers and alliances involved in integrating existing and developing library and campus initiatives to create a unique integrated service point for research, writing, and oral communication in the heart of the university’s main library. The case study also identifies continued partnership and collaboration, and briefly outlines methods through which libraries might initiate similar transformational changes and mergers at their own institutions, serving as a model for similar alliances in other settings.

The Evolution of Eastern Kentucky University Libraries Orientations: Giving Students a LIbStart to Student Success Through Library Engagement

Abstract Library anxiety is well-documented in the literature; however, traditional college students often also lack understanding about the value of libraries, due in part to the misconception that “everything is (easily and quickly) available and accessible online.” To combat this misconception and library anxiety, Eastern Kentucky University (EKU) Libraries replaced boring service overviews and cumbersome, awkward tours of our building with LibStart: participatory, student-lead experiences that situate the Library as a central partner in the higher education experience. By inviting students to show us the library through their eyes, we harnessed the strengths of our libraries, its people and services, and even our own students to create engaging, impactful orientations that reduce library anxiety and communicate library value. This chapter traces the history of the library orientation at EKU Libraries, sharing how we revived and continue to improve library orientations through collaboration and assessment, harnessing the strengths of librarians, students, and instructors.