Explore exciting programs and initiatives that can both engage undergraduate students with academic libraries and assist academic librarians in creating a vibrant library atmosphere. In spite of the doom and gloom predicted in the press for the future of libraries, these institutions aren't at the top of the endangered species list just yet. Librarians who are focusing significant attention and staffing resources on undergraduates—and are thinking creatively about what engages this specific group of students—are forging the future for academic libraries. Student Engagement and the Academic Library explores how initiatives that involve high impact educational practices and other creative programs can effectively engage undergraduate students with academic libraries. The methodologies described in this work serve to draw students in and make their learning meaningful, both through curricular initiatives as well as through co-curricular and self-initiated activities, disciplinary initiatives, and partnerships across the university. This book will benefit any librarian seeking to further engage their college-age student populations, and will be especially helpful to libraries that are struggling to establish their programs and initiatives with today's students.

As the role and practices of the academic library are evolving, so too is the relationship between the library and other areas of the university. This volume explores the library’s relationship with students, including the library-based learner, creating engaging classroom experiences, the library as an extension of the classroom, and more.

"The Engaged Library provides case studies, examples, and discussion of how academic libraries can create successful partnerships to contribute to the integration of high-impact practices on their campuses, and ways to execute these practices well. Each chapter addresses one of the ten original high-impact practices through the lens of library partnerships, contributions, and opportunities, and provides ideas for and examples of outcomes assessment. A variety of types of institutions are included, and some chapters discuss initiatives that involve a combination of multiple practices. Across all of the chapters and case studies, you will find examples of well-orchestrated and engaging models that rely on instructional teams of faculty, advisers, librarians, and technology professionals to enhance and deepen the practices' impact on student learning"--www.alastore.ala.org.

Tailor your institution's approach to transfer students using this collection’s creative ideas for orientations, library instruction, partnerships with like-minded campus groups, and other initiatives.

Did you know that more than 85% of U.S. undergraduates commute to college? Yet the literature geared to academic libraries overwhelmingly presumes a classic, residential campus. This book redresses that imbalance by providing a research-based look at the specific academic needs of commuter students. Edited by a team of librarians and anthropologists with City University of New York, the largest urban public university in the U.S, it draws on their ongoing research examining how these students actually interact with and use the library. The insights they’ve gained about how library resources and services are central to commuter students’ academic work offer valuable lessons for other institutions. Presenting several additional case studies from a range of institution types and sizes, in both urban and suburban settings, this book provides rigorous analysis alongside descriptions of subsequent changes in services, resources, and facilities. Topics include why IUPUI interior designers decided to scrap plans to remove public workstations to make way for collaborative space;how ongoing studies by University of North Carolina anthropologist Donna Lanclos shaped the design of the Family Friendly Library Room, where students may bring their children;ways that free scanners and tablet lending at Brooklyn College supports subway studiers;ideas from students on how best to help them through the use of textbook collections;using ACRL’s Assessment in Action model to learn about student engagement and outcomes with library instruction at a community college; andguidance on enlisting the help of anthropology students to conduct interviews and observations in an ethnographic study. With its emphasis on qualitative research, this book will help readers learn what commuter students really need from academic libraries.

Once considered the "heart of the university," many academic libraries are facing heightened pressures to prove their relevance and value to administrators, faculty, and students, especially during these times of constrained resources and greater calls for accountability and productivity in higher education. At the same time, colleges and universities are continually striving to understand how their institutional environments affect undergraduate engagement, persistence and, ultimately, degree attainment. As a fundamental co-curricular resource, it is time for academic libraries to start systematically assessing how they affect, either directly or indirectly, their parent institutions' goals of student engagement and persistence. This quantitative study investigated the relationship between the use of an academic library, its physical resources and spaces, and student engagement and persistence at a large, public, research university. This unique study combined institutional and library data sources for analysis, including the results from a large-scale student experience survey with over 13,000 respondents, data from the student information system, and library use data from a variety of library data systems. Descriptive statistics as well as correlations, linear regressions, and logistic regressions were conducted to investigate the relationship between the library-use variables and variables representing sense of belonging and satisfaction, academic engagement, academic disengagement, and persistence. The study found many practically significant, as well as statistically significant, correlations and predictive relationships between the library-use variables and the student outcome variables for engagement and persistence, although most of the effect sizes were small. The small to medium effect sizes re-presented in the results suggest that there a complex relationships between the variables and indicate the need for further research. This study contributes to an area of the literature that has received little attention from previous researchers and demonstrates one approach to creating a unique student-level dataset by combining student experience survey data with institutional data and library use data in order to investigate how the use of library resources and spaces may affect student success outcomes.

Part 6. Students as library designers -- Just ask them! : designing services and spaces on the foundation of student feedback / Emily Daly, Joyce Chapman, and Thomas Crichlow -- Pizza for your thoughts : building a vibrant dialogue with students through informal focus groups / Kenneth J. Burhanna