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Library Orientations ToolKit: The Context

This guide is intended to provide useful information for new and returning library volunteers who assist during university events for new students, staff, or faculty.

The Orientation Team:

The team's charge is to plan orientation activities (including ensuring participation, scheduling volunteers, building tutorials, providing swag, and any other needs).  The team typically meets every two weeks (via Zoom) throughout the academic year (unless there are no agenda items) and communicates via email.  All team activities are documented in the UL shared drive in the Orientations folder.  Below are links to popular content:

Team Membership: 
Participation is open and library individuals are invited to contribute in any capacity.  If you are interested in joining the team, please reach out to us, or to one of the team members:

Key Requesters of Library Orientation Services:

The Office of First-Year Orientations supports new/returning/transfer undergraduate students and their families in their transition to campus. They provide orientations and programs led by professional staff, and upper-class student leadership (Orientation Counselors and Leaders) and partner with residential education staff and various administrative bodies (Office of International Education, Student Life, SLICE, various colleges, libraries, etc.)

The Office of Graduate and Post Doctoral Affairs supports new/returning/transfer graduate and post-doctoral students and provides events and programming to welcome them and highlight services that enhance their graduate experience at Carnegie Mellon University.  They also partner with the Office of International Education, Student Life, Colleges, and the libraries, etc.)

Individual Colleges/Schools/Departments host their own welcoming and/or orientation events for their new students and faculty. Typically, liaison librarians are invited to participate in these events and are encouraged to contact their schools and departments to coordinate details regarding the nature of such participation.

The Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty is responsible for events and programming targeted towards new faculty.  CMU Libraries are invited to participate in these events or programs.

Coordinating Orientations: A Brief Background

Prior to 2008, programming to welcome new/returning/transitioning students, staff, and faculty existed and the libraries were already engaged in resource fairs, and orientations (library tours).  These activities were coordinated by the Head of Hunt Reference who also coordinated instructional activities.  Departmental events were part of liaison responsibilities. The data was reported directly to ARL using an in-house system.

In 2012, I took over coordination responsibilities. I continued to communicate with the key players and ensured that the libraries continued participating in tours, resource fairs, and events that are hosted university-wide and open to the target audience mentioned above.  Data from that year on was reported using Springshare's LibInsight.

In November 2020, the Orientation Team was created to help manage planning, marketing, and creating modules and handouts for our target audiences. 

Starting July/August 2022, the coordination of orientation activities was split to address two main target audiences: undergraduates in one group, and graduates, post-doctoral, and new faculty in the other.  The Orientation Team continues to meet to discuss those activities for both but reporting responsibilities are now shared between the Associate Dean for Liaison Services (Neelam Bharti) and myself. Departmental orientations and other library outreach to the faculty continue to be the responsibility of liaisons who report to the Associate Dean for Liaison Services, while other outreach is handled by various library units.

 

Getting Oriented with Library Orientations

Universities in general, and Carnegie Mellon University in particular, implement programs and activities that target incoming students and their families, as well as new staff and faculty, in order to welcome them to the university, meet their needs, and prepare them for academic success and a fulfilling career.

CMU Libraries have long participated in these events in various capacities: presentations, tours, panels, etc.  Here you will get a better understanding of the key players and the role that our libraries play in participating in these events.

Below is a chart showing annual orientation and resource fair participation data by target audience:

 

NOTE: The focus of this guide is on outreach to new, returning, and transfer students, staff, or faculty only.  CMU Libraries engages in various outreach events to the university community that are independently coordinated by external relations and other units and are not addressed in this guide.  Although we reported data prior to 2014, this data reflects statistics entered in LibInsight, which started in 2014 and stops with Fall Orientations in September 27, 2022.

The Multiple (Grad only includes a combination of graduate students).  The Multiple categories don't include  any non-cmu affiliate; those are included in "other"