Librarian consultations – supporting student researchers in the hybrid world - #LILAC22

This is Sheila liveblogging from the LILAC conference: I ALSO liveblogged a session that Pam already covered (we are coordinated better now!) - so you might as well have my angle as well! This was Librarian consultations – supporting student researchers in the hybrid world, authored by Ruth Jenkins, Christine Love-Rodgers (presenters), Marshall Dozier and Chung Yau Yiu (University of Edinburgh). 

Jenkins identified how students may struggle with their research, specifically the information literacy aspects. She talked about the characteristics of the university and the composition of the academic library team: they have 13 academic support librarians and 3 college focused teams. They do a variety of generic, targeted sessions and individual sessions, mostly postgraduates (with 14% undergraduates and 5% staff). The Librarian consultation Service is offered by the ASLs, and students are given individual support with searches, including systematic review. The length of the consultation varies between discipline (e.g. longer if it involves a systematic review). Since 2020 they’ve had an online service (though there is a little transition back to face to face now), and in 2021 they had a relaunch of their services to arts and humanities students. 

The librarians wanted to learn more about what students thought of the service and how it could be improved: inspired by a study from Dalton (2019). They had 77 respondents to their questionnaire. There was a spread of disciplines, though more from some disciplines (e.g. 19% were from education, only 1% from engineering). Some glimpses of findings: most frequent way of finding out about the service was via lecturers, and about 70% were very satisfied with the service. There was a free text section, and some points were respondents did become more aware of databases on their subjects and felt the librarians had given them guidance. 

Respondents were asked what they would do differently. This included using more tools and resources (including other sources such as interloans), realising you could ask for help, doing more complex searches and thinking about them more strategically. Conclusions included: identifying the importance of connecting with supervisors (to influence students). They will continue to get feedback on the service to continue to improve it and to make it sustainable.