The undergraduate library at major research universities, an historic product of the 1960s and 70s, now provides opportunities for leadership on numerous levels, particularly as universities deepen their commitment to the holistic experience of undergraduate students. Instead of focusing heavily on disciplinary research help or building research-level collections, the undergraduate library’s focus on teaching, learning spaces, and community fosters a crossroads of interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation that inspires change across campus. Featuring examples drawn from Odegaard Undergraduate Library of the University of Washington, this article explores the value of leading from unexpected places to collaborate and build services and programs with lasting and catalyzing impacts.
As part of ARL’s Research Library Impact Framework initiative, the University of Washington (UW) Odegaard Library’s Undergraduate Student Success Team designed an assessment framework for outreach to undergraduates. This practice brief describes the UW team’s outreach and assessment planning processes, the qualitative and quantitative assessment methods employed, the results of their assessment program, the lessons learned, and the best practices that emerged over several years and several iterations of conducting library outreach assessment. The brief presents both long-term reflections and most recent applications between 2016–2021.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.