Beyond Disciplines: Providing Outreach to Underserved Groups by Demographic

Abstract

As more students, faculty, and staff from traditionally underrepresented groups enter universities and colleges, academic libraries must find ways to reach out to these groups in order to better meet their unique educational needs. In this article, librarians from two large public universities describe how they used data about their communities to determine which underserved groups might need additional outreach, and then marketed library tools and services to student veterans, students with disabilities, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students.

Insourcing library outreach: Engaging technical services in outreach to student organizations

“…In order to connect with new and underserved campus populations, academic libraries are increasingly turning to outreach. Libraries are using outreach to engage with underserved patron populations (Helton 2010;Mathuews and Lewis 2017;Rutledge and LeMire 2016;Walter 2005) as well as other unique populations such as first-year students (Currie 2009;Collins and Dodsworth 2011), international students (Langer and Kubo 2015;Li, McDowell, and Wang 2016), and distance education students (Holloway 2011;Ziegler 2017). Libraries frequently report collaborating on outreach activities with campus units such as student services (Crowe 2010;Love and Edwards 2009;Ursin Cummings 2007), student organizations (Engle 2011), and academic departments (Cannady, King, and Blendinger 2012).…”

International Students and the Canadian University

“…An "outpost" librarian is a potential form of embedded librarian, which Rudin (2008) identified as "the next logical leap from outreach to outposts, leaving the mother ship to set up satellite service points, seeking a new and more effective deployment model for the university librarian cadre" (p. 60). As Rutledge and LeMire (2016) observed, this model also depends on the international student to approach the outpost, which may not be effective since these students may not have strong affiliations and connections with the campus. They stated that "outposts are in many cases a passive kind of outreach, requiring students and other community members to take the initiative to visit the librarian, which can discourage those who are unfamiliar with library services" (Rutledge & Lemire, 2016, p. 115).…”

“…Creating "outposts" is not enough to attract international students to the library; building relationships with campus departments and organizations provides an active way in which the library may provide effective outreach. Rutledge and LeMire (2016) stated that another strategy for active outreach that they used at their university "was to build relationships directly with students in our target demographic areas" (p. 120). The international student librarian may foster relationships through informal interviews across campus and identify areas for improvement through direct contact with the students.…”

Supporting Our Troops: Library Services and Support for Veterans

“…Librarians have long used outreach and programming to support underserved populations. Some libraries have used outreach strategies such as exhibits, panel discussions, and invited guest speakers to make the library more explicitly welcoming to underserved populations such as LGBTQ college students, student veterans, and patrons with autism spectrum disorders (Remy & Seaman, 2014;Rutledge & LeMire, 2016). Other libraries have employed outreach strategies that overcome access barriers by bringing library resources directly to underserved patrons, such as providing storytime at homeless shelters or for a class of physically challenged students at a local school (Mars, 2012;Vogel, 2008).…”