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Proposal for Roving Librarian at UBC
Reference and Instruction Committee
Prepared by Katherine Kalsbeek, Anne O’Shea, and Christina Sylka
May 10, 2005
Rationale
While the UBC Library does an excellent job of providing reference services to specific faculties and schools on and off campus, it has become clear that many first year students do not strongly affiliate with any one subject area and may not find their way to the appropriate service point. This project gives the library a visible presence on campus in traditionally underserved populations – thereby providing ‘point of need’ reference assistance to students, increasing their knowledge of the library’s services and collections and acting as a marketing tool.
Background
Recognizing that students – especially first year students – often experience difficulty locating the appropriate library service point at their university, North American academic librarians have experimented with extending their in-person reference services beyond the library walls.
In particular, librarians at Harvard University, the Texas A&M, Duke University, Brandeis University and Simon Fraser University have written in the professional literature about their experiences with roving reference. Different terminology is used to describe the service: “roving librarian” (Harvard University), “Librarian in the house” (Duke University), “Ask Us HERE!” (SFU), and “the Librarian is IN” (Brandeis University).
Essentially, however, the service is the same. Librarians use lap-tops to provide reference service to students in their comfort zones: common areas in dorms (Harvard), departmental study areas (SFU), and cafeterias (Duke). As an outreach initiative, librarians from these diverse geographical and subject areas report that the “mobile model is successful in uniting librarians with patrons who would otherwise not receive reference assistance” (Wong & O’Shea, 2004).
Proposal Details
Locations:
There are numerous locations on campus that would reach first year students effectively at times when they are likely to be thinking about schoolwork. The following locations were chosen because they were not so busy that the students would be uninterested in receiving assistance, but also attract students who might not find their way into the library.
1. Writing Centre
The UBC Writing centre is an area with heavy first year traffic. It typically attracts undergraduate students who may attend an optional non-credit writing course or drop in tutoring and editing of papers. The tutors are upper division undergraduates or graduate assistants, generally with no library training. Users frequently ask for research assistance and help tracking down partial citations.
Recommendation: 2 hour weekly drop-in sessions with a librarian on site, preferably one who is familiar with the Arts One and Science One programs.
2. Buchanan Lounge
Located in the Buchanan complex, this is a study area with a coffee and sandwich bar. It is always full of students studying and working on group projects. Arts Advising has an office adjacent to the lounge and students often come in looking for educational advice. Recently, the Arts Coop office began holding weekly drop-in career information at a booth in the lounge. This is an ideal location for the library to integrate into the student services already offered. The majority of courses in Buchanan are in the social sciences and humanities.
Recommendation: 2 hour weekly drop-in sessions with a librarian on site, preferably one from the humanities and social science division.
3. Forest Sciences Centre – Lounge
Part of the new forestry complex, this is a very large lounge that is heavily used by Forestry students and faculty. Chairs and tables allow for individual and group work and a strong wireless signal allows plenty of research time. There is a Bread Garden café beside the lounge, one of the few food services at the newer end of campus -this makes the lounge a high visibility location where we can reach numerous patrons.
Recommendation: 2 hour weekly drop-in sessions with a librarian on site, preferably one from the MacMillan Library.
4. Place Vanier and Totem Park – Undergraduate Residences
On campus, first year students typically live at Place Vanier or Totem Park residences. Both have a ‘common block’ where students congregate including several rooms with tables and chairs that would be ideal for a once weekly library drop-in session. Using signage and liaising with the on-site residence advisors, this would be a highly visible service for new students at the university.
Recommendation: 2 hour weekly drop-in sessions at each common block (one at Place Vanier and one at Totem Park) with 2 librarians on-site at each location. Because students in these locations do not have a single subject need, there is no need to prefer specific subject expertise from the on-site librarians.
Format:
A review of the literature that exists on ‘roving reference” initiatives suggests that the following resources are essential:
1. Laptop
2. Portable cart with wheels
3. 2 folding chairs
4. Professionally-designed signs to market the service
5. Velcro-display board
Marketing:
A targeted marketing campaign prior to launching this initiative is essential to ensuring its success (Smith & Pietraszewski, 2004). We propose that the roving reference service be marketed to the UBC community of staff, students and faculty in the following ways:
1. Ads in UBC publications, including the Ubyssey newspaper and UBC Reports
2. Signage on the posting boards in student dorms
3. Ad in the UBC day-planner that students receive
4. Broadcast email messages advertising the service will be sent to departmental secretaries and the first-year listserv that all first year students subscribe to.
5. is there a way to get an article in the Ubyssey or UBC Reports?>
6 Ehelp – ad while waiting?
7. Liaison Librarians – in-class orientations?
Evaluation
To ensure that the project is meeting the goal of locating and contacting undergraduate students, the project would include an evaluation period. Ideally, this would include feedback forms that would be given to students after each contact and inclusion on the annual library survey. Librarians will also keep standard statistics about the number of reference or directional questions they receive. These should be gathered for two full semesters (winter term one and two) and then reviewed. At this point, a recommendation will be made by the Reference and Instruction committee about whether the service should be continued or expanded.
Budget and Staffing Requirements
Equipment:
With the temporary closure of the Chapman Learning Commons in May 2005, the laptops that are currently loaned to students through the Laptop lending program will be available. We would like to borrow a laptop for the 12 week duration of this program. We suggest contacting Library Facilities to see if a portable cart with wheels and 2 folding chairs is available.
Marketing:
A Velcro-display board is used to market the UBC Library at Student Orientations in September. We would like to use this display and, with the assistance of Merry Meredith in Library Graphics, we would like to design some additional signage for the board. As well, we would like to design signage that would be posted on the bulletin boards in student dorms, and an ad that would be placed in the student planner and would run in the various UBC newspapers.
Staffing hours
This pilot project would run for 2 semester, from September 2005 to April 2006. A review of the literature suggests that the peak times to offer this service are early afternoon and early evening from Monday to Friday. This service would be offered in two locations and staffed from a pool of reference librarians and would require that each librarian commit to 2 hours of his/her time once every two weeks. So, a total 168 hours of staff time would be required to run this service. This cross-disciplinary approach to staffing an outreach service has a successful model in the pool of librarians providing e-chat reference.
