Northeast Ohio Regional Library System

Recorded 3/2/2023

How does access to a school librarian help students prepare for their first year of college? Do students feel more prepared for college-level research? Does it have any effect on feelings of library anxiety? Did remote learning have an impact? In fall 2021, we conducted a survey of first-year students from Ohio at Miami University and The Ohio State University at Newark to help answer these questions. We analyzed student responses based on the different types of high schools and districts they attended throughout Ohio. In this session, we will discuss the results of our findings that when students receive librarian help in high school, they feel measurably more confident about doing college-level research. But what happens when students don't receive this help? We will discuss these findings as well. In addition, we will share our students' understanding of how college librarians can help them in their own words and discuss how we have changed our own approaches to our work with first-year students in instruction, reference, and web services.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe the differences in exposure to library instruction reported by students in Ohio high schools.
• Understand first-year students’ self-described knowledge of college librarians
• Implement at least one new strategy to overcome first-year students’ library anxiety

Presenters:

Abigail Morgan is a Social Sciences Librarian at Miami University, with liaison responsibilities to the business school as well as the departments of Anthropology and Teaching, Curriculum, & Educational Inquiry. She works with first-year students as an instructor in a first-year research experience credit-bearing class and in the business school’s first-year integrated core curriculum. She worked previously as a middle school teacher and school librarian.





Jerry Yarnetsky is a web services librarian at Miami University where he focuses on user experience and accessibility. He also teaches a course on interaction design and development at Miami. He previously worked extensively with incoming students at Montgomery County Community College in metro Philadelphia.







Janell Verdream is an Instruction Librarian at The Ohio State University- Newark and Central Ohio Technical College. She works primarily with first- and second-year students in a credit-bearing research class, as well as in one-shot library sessions.