Hear how library staff reimagined their first-year student orientation activity in order to highlight the work being done by individual departments and communicate how each department supports the library as a whole. The poster will explore the first-year library orientation passport activity that got students moving around the library building to engage with each department and collect passport stamps.
This is a modified PowerPoint version of the poster, which had been created in the digital iPoster system

Jallas, Mallory R.

Moore, Kevin

English

As the year winds down, you may already be planning new student orientation activities to showcase your library and services. This unique program, designed by a committee of departments, offers insight into the types of activities they implemented to help enhance interaction between library staff and students

Gettysburg College

Musselman Library Staff Publications Musselman Library 6-12-2019 Ensemble Cast: Reinventing First-Year Library Orientation to Feature All Departments Mallory R. Jallas Gettysburg College Kevin Moore Gettysburg College Follow this and additional works at: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/librarypubs  Part of the Archival Science Commons, Collection Development and Management Commons, Information Literacy Commons, and the Scholarly Communication Commons Share feedback about the accessibility of this item. Recommended Citation Jallas, Mallory and Kevin Moore. "Ensemble Cast: Reinventing First-Year Library Orientation to Feature All Departments." Library Connect 17, no. 5 (2019). This open access newsletter is brought to you by The Cupola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College. It has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of The Cupola. For more information, please contact cupola@gettysburg.edu. Ensemble Cast: Reinventing First-Year Library Orientation to Feature All Departments Abstract As the year winds down, you may already be planning new student orientation activities to showcase your library and services. This unique program, designed by a committee of departments, offers insight into the types of activities they implemented to help enhance interaction between library staff and students. Keywords first year orientation, Musselman Library, Gettysburg College, CYC, library departments Disciplines Archival Science | Collection Development and Management | Information Literacy | Library and Information Science | Scholarly Communication Comments This article is based on the authors’ poster presentation at the 2019 ACRL Conference, “Ensemble Cast: Reinventing First-Year Library Orientation to Feature All Departments.” Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License. This newsletter is available at The Cupola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/librarypubs/117  Ensemble cast: Reinventing first-year library orientation to feature all departments Mallory Jallas and Kevin Moore, Gettysburg College   First-year students explore an exhibit in Special Collections & College Archives.  Gettysburg College is a four-year, residential liberal arts college located in Gettysburg, PA. The institution serves 2,600 undergraduates and welcomes a cohort of around 700 first-year students each fall. During the first week of classes, new students participate in an extended, campus-wide orientation called “Charting Your Course” (CYC), which includes both required and optional activities. Because the library’s CYC activity is required for students, it represents our largest first-year outreach connection. Musselman Library’s Research & Instruction Department traditionally planned and organized a scavenger hunt-style activity before recruiting library staff from other departments to help with staffing for the event. In the summer of 2018, two librarians (the authors) were tasked to reevaluate the CYC activity for the upcoming fall semester. Orientation activity changes and library buy-in In our initial planning, we consulted the literature to learn how other colleges and universities had structured their first-year student orientations. Among our findings were two recurring, major sources of students’ library anxiety: confusion about the location of library service points and uncertainty about who to approach with specific questions (Vrbancic & Byerley, 2018; Collins & Dodsworth, 2011). The findings caused us to question whether Gettysburg College students would benefit more from an orientation that emphasized library departments’ different roles instead of treating the library as a monolithic space. To attempt this, we decided to decentralize our orientation activity’s planning process. Collaborative orientation planning After meeting with library departments to discuss past orientations, we asked for one or two members of each department to serve on an orientation activity planning group, which met monthly over the summer. This planning group refined the library activity’s learning outcomes and pitched a cohesive vision for the activity’s overarching structure while leaving the details of each department’s involvement to the individual departments. In the interim, we coordinated with campus partners in College Life and handled other orientation-wide logistics.  The timeline shows the breakdown of the work for the library orientation Orientation passport activity For the revised orientation, students could visit the library at any point between 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday of the first week of classes. After entering the building, they received a blank passport document from the check-in desk and were required to visit the following five stations throughout the library, where they would receive a passport stamp after completing a short activity: • Scholarly Communications: Watch a short narrated video about how The Cupola, Gettysburg College’s institutional repository, improves the visibility of student scholarship and speak with Scholarly Communications staff about affordable textbook initiatives • User Services: Play a brief memory-style matching game designed to advertise various items available for loan at the Check Out Desk (e.g., chargers, course reserves, and umbrellas) • Research & Instruction: Spin a wheel at the Research Help Desk and learn about the sort of assistance librarians can provide or the various ways of contacting the Research Help Desk • Technical Services: Visit the Technical Services offices and learn about the breadth of the library’s print and digital collections, including streaming film and music, while having an opportunity to activate their New York Times pass • Special Collections & College Archives: Students were asked a question (Why wasn’t a college yearbook printed in 1919?) that could be answered by consulting the College History collection or by browsing the featured exhibit on World War I Once students got all five stamps, they could return to the check-in desk, have their ID card scanned, and receive their choice of library swag items. Similar to previous years, the activity could be completed individually or as part of a small group.   Technical Services welcomes first-year students  Feedback, changes for next time, and key takeaways During the three afternoons, 643 first-year students participated, which represented 85 percent of the first-year class. The library gathered student feedback by reusing the same follow-up survey questions used to assess previous years’ CYC activities. The online survey was administered two weeks after the event and had a 15 percent response rate.  While the responses were collected solely for internal use, we were pleased with the results. Library staff members were enthusiastic about the revised format, especially in departments that had been underrepresented in previous orientation activities (i.e., Scholarly Communications and Technical Services) and now had a more equitable platform. Every member of the library’s CYC planning group expressed interest in retaining this format for future orientation activities. In the next iteration, the planning committee will address bottlenecking issues by designing activities that better accommodate small groups or by adjusting the activities to allow students to join midway.  The experience of redesigning the library orientation activity with all departments provided us with more in-depth insight into our colleagues’ perspectives on students’ information needs. Overall, this experience enhanced the interaction of library staff with first-year students during their orientation.  This article is based on the authors’ poster presentation at the 2019 ACRL Conference, “Ensemble Cast: Reinventing First-Year Library Orientation to Feature All Departments.”   Citations and Further Readings:  Anders, K. C., German, E. M., & Graves, S. J. (2016). Using student volunteers in library orientations. Practical Academic Librarianship: The International Journal of the SLA Academic Division, 6(2), 17–30. Brown, A.G., Weingart, S., Johnson, J.R.J., & Dance, B. (2004). Librarians don’t bite: Assessing library orientation for freshmen. Reference Services Review, 32, 394–403. doi: 10.1108/00907320410569752 Collins, N., & Dodsworth, E. (2011). Reaching first-year students during orientation week. Partnership : The Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research; Toronto, 6(2), 1–8. Hughes, H., Hall, N., Pozzi, M., Howard, S., & Jaquet, A. (2016). Passport to study: Flipped library orientation for international students. Australian Academic & Research Libraries, 47, 124–142. doi: 10.1080/00048623.2016.1225552 Kelly, K. (2018, March 21). Opening act: Putting on a music festival-themed student orientation. Presented at the 3rd Personal Librarian and First-Year Experience Library Conference, Cleveland, OH. Retrieved from https://ecommons.udayton.edu/roesch_fac_presentations/48/ Manus, S. J. B. (2009). Librarian in the classroom: An embedded approach to music information literacy for first-year undergraduates. Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association, 66, 249–261. Vrbancic, E. K., & Byerley, S. L. (2018). High-touch, low-tech: Investigating the value of an in-person library orientation game. College & Undergraduate Libraries, 25, 39–51. doi: 10.1080/10691316.2017.1318429 

Ensemble Cast: Reinventing First-Year Library Orientation to Feature All Departments

Musselman Library Staff Publications Musselman Library 4-11-2019 Ensemble Cast: Reinventing First-Year Library Orientation to Feature All Departments Mallory R. Jallas Gettysburg College Kevin Moore Gettysburg College Follow this and additional works at: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/librarypubs  Part of the Information Literacy Commons Share feedback about the accessibility of this item. Recommended Citation Jallas, Mallory and Kevin Moore. "Ensemble Cast: Reinventing First-Year Library Orientation to Feature All Departments." Poster presented at the ACRL conference, Cleveland, OH, April 11, 2019. This open access conference material is brought to you by The Cupola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College. It has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of The Cupola. For more information, please contact cupola@gettysburg.edu. Ensemble Cast: Reinventing First-Year Library Orientation to Feature All Departments Abstract Hear how library staff reimagined their first-year student orientation activity in order to highlight the work being done by individual departments and communicate how each department supports the library as a whole. The poster will explore the first-year library orientation passport activity that got students moving around the library building to engage with each department and collect passport stamps. This is a modified PowerPoint version of the poster, which had been created in the digital iPoster system. Keywords Musselman Library, Gettysburg College, first year orientation, library staff Disciplines Information Literacy | Library and Information Science Comments This poster was presented at the Association of College and Research Libraries conference in Cleveland, OH on April 11, 2019. Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. This conference material is available at The Cupola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/librarypubs/115 This is a modified PowerPoint version of a poster presented at ACRL 2019. The original presentation used the iPoster platform. Ensemble Cast: Reinventing First-Year Library Orientation to Feature All Departments Mallory Jallas Kevin Moore Musselman Library, Gettysburg College  Poster presented at the Association of College and Research Libraries conference Cleveland, OH April 11, 2019 Abstract Hear how library staff reimagined their first-year student orientation activity in order to highlight the work being done by individual departments and communicate how each department supports the library as a whole. The poster will explore the first-year library orientation passport activity that got students moving around the library building to engage with each department and collect passport stamps. Background & Context • The Charting Your Course (CYC) orientation gives us the opportunity to connect with first-year students during their first week of fall semester classes • In past years we have reached upwards of 85% of first-year students  • Two major sources of new students’ library anxiety include: • Not knowing where library services are located (Vrbancic & Byerley, 2018) • Not knowing who to approach with questions about specific library services and collections (Collins & Dodsworth, 2011) Background & Context, cont. • Traditionally, our Research & Instruction department designed a scavenger-hunt-style orientation and then recruited other library staff members to help run the activity  Background & Context, cont. • We decided to revisit this approach in advance of the fall 2018 orientation. One of our goals was to decentralize the planning process and give individual departments more agency over how they would introduce themselves to first-year students  Background & Context, cont. • Student Learning Outcomes • Gain familiarity with Musselman Library layout and service points in order to effectively navigate the library • Interact with friendly library staff in order to know from whom to get help when needed • Explore library collections in order to access information in a variety of formats Collaborative Work Orientation Activity Orientation Activity, cont. Scholarly Communications • Students watched a brief video and discussed Open Access resources with Scholarly Communications staff Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ffusjdTQF4 Orientation Activity, cont. User Services • Students played a memory style matching game to identify materials that can be checked out from the library Orientation Activity, cont. Research & Instruction • Students spun a wheel to learn about research services and ways to get help from the Research Help Desk Orientation Activity, cont. Technical Services • Students learned more about various electronic collections, including streaming film, ebooks, and digital newspaper access Orientation Activity, cont. Special Collections & College Archives • Students explored a collection of college yearbooks and an exhibit Assessment Students • Completed a survey two weeks after orientation ended • Respondents’ names were entered into a drawing for a $25 campus bookstore gift card • Answered four Likert scale questions and three open-response questions from previous CYC surveys • Data collected solely for internal use Assessment, cont. Assessment, cont. Library Staff • Working group unanimously agreed to reuse this new structure for future CYC activities • Anecdotally, library staff reported feeling more invested in their portion of the activity • Departments that were traditionally underrepresented in the previous activity (i.e. Scholarly Communications and Technical Services) appreciated having a more equitable platform Takeaways • Initial meetings with library departments gave us insight into students’ information needs from our colleagues’ perspectives  • Developing orientation-wide learning outcomes allowed us to decentralize the activity planning while maintaining a cohesive vision for the student experience  • Requiring each department’s activity to take 3–5 minutes and restricting handouts to bookmark-sized materials helped prevent cognitive overload  • Bottlenecking caused delays at a few stations • As a library, we hope to be more intentional about designing activities that can be joined midway through or completed as a small group instead of as individuals References • Anders, K. C., German, E. M., & Graves, S. J. (2016). Using student volunteers in library orientations. Practical Academic Librarianship: The International Journal of the SLA Academic Division, 6(2), 17–30.  • Brown, A.G., Weingart, S., Johnson, J.R.J., & Dance, B. (2004). Librarians don’t bite: Assessing library orientation for freshmen. Reference Services Review, 32, 394–403. doi: 10.1108/00907320410569752  • Collins, N., & Dodsworth, E. (2011). Reaching first-year students during orientation week. Partnership : The Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research; Toronto, 6(2), 1–8.  • Hughes, H., Hall, N., Pozzi, M., Howard, S., & Jaquet, A. (2016). Passport to study: Flipped library orientation for international students. Australian Academic & Research Libraries, 47, 124–142. doi: 10.1080/00048623.2016.1225552  • Manus, S. J. B. (2009). Librarian in the classroom: An embedded approach to music information literacy for first-year undergraduates. Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association, 66, 249–261.  • Vrbancic, E. K., & Byerley, S. L. (2018). High-touch, low-tech: Investigating the value of an in-person library orientation game. College & Undergraduate Libraries, 25, 39–51. doi: 10.1080/10691316.2017.1318429 Author Information Mallory Jallas is a Research & Instruction Librarian at Gettysburg College’s Musselman Library. She is the co-coordinator of the library’s Peer Research Mentor program. Her work focuses on information literacy instruction, reference service, and library marketing. She received he MS in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign   Kevin Moore designs and leads information literacy instruction sessions for students from all disciplines while also serving as Musselman Library’s liaison to the biology and psychology departments. He holds an MSLIS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as well as a BA in biology from Whitman College. 

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Ensemble Cast: Reinventing First-Year Library Orientation to Feature All Departments

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