Principles and Practices for Library Outreach to First-Year Students

Academic libraries recognize that outreach is best undertaken as soon as students arrive on campus for their first year. Librarians have designed creative methods for en-gaging incoming students with the resources and services provided by the campus library. Such outreach is increasingly important as prior experience using library resources and services among incoming first-year students decreases. This paper reviews the rationale for employing several methods of outreach to first-year students and provides examples of creative means for doing so implemented successfully at American colleges and universities. Hope College’s information literacy objectives and its library’s outreach programs, both as initially conceived and as they have evolved in the years since, are given particular attention as examples of varied, dynamic ap-proaches to first-year student outreach. When first-year college students arrive on their campus as new members of the community, they become acquainted with the academic and social cultures of the place and people. A vibrant library is part of both these aspects of colle