First-Year Library Experience Roundtable

American higher education institutions currently take as a given that student orientation and instruction programs help incoming students adjust to their new environment, provide familiarity with resources and services, and improve the likelihood of long-term student success and retention. While nearly all institutions provide some level of formal acclimation process for undergraduate students, fewer do so for graduate students. Reasons for this are understandable. Because graduate student programs are more costly and compressed, most programs are highly restricted to deliver the maximum amount of subject knowledge in the minimum amount of time. Having successfully completed undergraduate education, students in graduate programs are assumed to be masters of the research process. Those of us who interact with graduate students every day know—as do the students themselves—that this is not true. The purpose of this roundtable is to discuss the role of graduate librarianship in filling this information gap. Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students is possibly the only place where an in-depth conversation about onboarding for graduate students can occur among so many diverse, hands-on practitioners. Beyond the core services of individual or group, ad hoc or scheduled instruction and reference consultations, many of us direct or participate in graduate workshops, boot camps, and orientations with and without other campus partners at the library, graduate school, or university level. What we do, and how we do it varies according to resources, budget, staffing, and the composition of our programs and student body. There is, in other words, no “right” or “only” way to design a first-year library experience for graduate students. We will share what we do, learn from each other, and attempt to provide pathways for other graduate librarians and programs