Support our troops: Strategies for serving veteran & military-affiliated students in academic libraries

This poster was presented at ACRL 2017, the biennial conference of the Association of College & Research Libraries.College and universities around the United States are enrolling veteran and military-affiliated students in ever-increasing numbers. Many of these colleges and universities have developed programs and services for veteran and military-affiliated students in order to help these students become academically successful. However, few of these programs and services involve the campus library. This poster, developed by an academic librarian who is an Army combat veteran, starts with the basics to help librarians understand who veteran and military-affiliated students are on their campuses and where to find them. It explains some fundamental aspects of military culture and connects this culture to existing research on the information-seeking behavior of veteran and military-affiliated students. Finally, this poster provides some suggestions for how librarians can get started working with veteran and military-affiliated students on their own campuses, including tips for low-cost services and easy-to-implement programs

Scout the road ahead: The early-career librarian's guide to using the academic calendar to manage your workload

This poster was presented at ALA 2017, the annual conference of the American Library Association.Committee volunteer opportunities, calls for proposals, instruction requests, and collection development deadlines can all sneak up on the early-career librarian, leaving them feeling overwhelmed at certain points during the academic year. This poster for early-career academic librarians will use graphics, charts, and bullet points to map out specific "crunch points" and important deadlines according to where they fall in the academic calendar. We will also have a handout that early-career librarians can use to remember questions to ask at their current or new institutions about specific deadlines and points in the academic calendar, such as the end of the fiscal year. This planning guide and poster will help early-career librarians recognize times each year when their workload is likely to increase or when they need to be prepared to submit proposals for conferences so that they can capitalize on opportunities, better organize their time and plan ahead to minimize stress and anxiety

Finding the right ingredients: Using discovery layers to find different types of sources

This recipe was created to encourage first-year students to explore the different flavors of materials available in the library using the discovery layer

Reduction deduction: Facets as a key ingredient to searching effectively in a discovery layer

One of the benefits of a discovery layer is the large number and variety of results. In order to search effectively, students must learn to narrow down those results in a meaningful way. This activity helps students tap into prior learning by exploring their natural use of facets and limiters in commercial online shopping. Students are then asked to transfer their shopping behaviors into the discovery layer using the facets and limiters

Insourcing Library Outreach: Engaging Technical Services in Outreach to Student Organizations

The Version of Record of this manuscript has been published and is available in College & Undergraduate Libraries, July 2019, https://doi.org/10.1080/10691316.2019.1636442In recent years, library outreach has become an increasingly important aspect of public services work. In order to expand capacity and engage patrons, libraries should consider expanding their library outreach programs to include the efforts and expertise of technical services personnel. In this article, librarians from Texas A&M University will share how public services librarians, cataloging experts, and preservation librarians collaborated to provide support for a student-led textbook lending library for student veterans. Through this collaboration, the library was able to develop new outreach opportunities that highlighted technical services expertise as well as lend support to an important campus effort to improve the affordability of college textbooks for veterans

Support our troops: Strategies for serving veteran & military-affiliated students in academic libraries

This poster was presented at ACRL 2017, the biennial conference of the Association of College & Research Libraries.College and universities around the United States are enrolling veteran and military-affiliated students in ever-increasing numbers. Many of these colleges and universities have developed programs and services for veteran and military-affiliated students in order to help these students become academically successful. However, few of these programs and services involve the campus library. This poster, developed by an academic librarian who is an Army combat veteran, starts with the basics to help librarians understand who veteran and military-affiliated students are on their campuses and where to find them. It explains some fundamental aspects of military culture and connects this culture to existing research on the information-seeking behavior of veteran and military-affiliated students. Finally, this poster provides some suggestions for how librarians can get started working with veteran and military-affiliated students on their own campuses, including tips for low-cost services and easy-to-implement programs

Exploring the library experiences of military dependents

College and university library programs and services for military-affiliated populations are typically aimed at student veterans and service members and not their spouses or children who are also students. However, librarians organizing programming for student veterans and service members often receive questions about also including other military-affiliated groups on campus, such as ROTC cadets or military dependents, the spouses/children of veterans who are using educational benefits, in their programming audience. This study explores the potential relevance of targeted library support for veterans and service members to military dependents. Findings suggest that incoming dependents' demographics and experiences with libraries are similar to those of other first time in college students. When designing programming and services for student veterans and service members, librarians should think critically about whether those programs and services are also appropriate for military dependents before expanding the target audience

Scaling instruction to needs: Updating an online information literacy course

Scalability is a buzzword in both libraries and higher education these days. As library budgets continue to tighten and technology continues to advance, libraries are flipping classrooms and deploying technology in order to better scale our instructional efforts. The University of Utah is no different. Several years ago, the library moved away from the standard one-shot workshops offered to the University’s undergraduate writing requirement course, Writing 2010, and replaced it with an online information literacy course. The transition has largely been successful, both at reducing the number of low-impact one-shot workshops our librarians teach, and also at involving instructors in information literacy. However, changes in personnel, technology, and curriculum prompted a recent revision and updating of the library’s information literacy course