Start Date
3-17-2020 9:00 AM
End Date
3-17-2020 9:30 AM
Description of Proposal
The CUNY (City University of New York) Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC) has a small group of postdoctoral science students who are primarily onsite for lab work. I was asked to develop a series of library workshops that would appeal to both the ASRC students, and the more traditional grad students at the Graduate Center (GC) main campus. Developing seminars that appeal to users as both students and as researchers simultaneously have been a rewarding challenge. I will discuss how I developed and modified these topics over the course of one semester for two different audiences, as well as the challenges in communication and outreach that I am facing. I didn't know how different my two constituencies were when I committed to the topics my workshops would be covering. By that time, I had to come up with ways to tweak the content of each section to appeal to the respective groups, and had to communicate to the two different groups just how useful the workshops could be to them. For example, for a workshop on open access, for the graduate students I highlighted how they can find author archived copies of journal articles that they might not otherwise have access to, while for the student researchers, I emphasized how they can use OA platforms to make their own work more visible, thus potentially increasing their readership.
Included in
Higher Education Commons, Library and Information Science Commons, Life Sciences Commons
Science Students and Student Researchers: Outreach Challenges Facing a Satellite Librarian
The CUNY (City University of New York) Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC) has a small group of postdoctoral science students who are primarily onsite for lab work. I was asked to develop a series of library workshops that would appeal to both the ASRC students, and the more traditional grad students at the Graduate Center (GC) main campus. Developing seminars that appeal to users as both students and as researchers simultaneously have been a rewarding challenge. I will discuss how I developed and modified these topics over the course of one semester for two different audiences, as well as the challenges in communication and outreach that I am facing. I didn't know how different my two constituencies were when I committed to the topics my workshops would be covering. By that time, I had to come up with ways to tweak the content of each section to appeal to the respective groups, and had to communicate to the two different groups just how useful the workshops could be to them. For example, for a workshop on open access, for the graduate students I highlighted how they can find author archived copies of journal articles that they might not otherwise have access to, while for the student researchers, I emphasized how they can use OA platforms to make their own work more visible, thus potentially increasing their readership.
What takeaways will attendees learn from your session?
Attendees will learn about the challengers facing librarians who are dealing with different populations of graduate students, strategies for marketing to and teaching these cohorts, and ways to avoid any confusion before they take on a project like this.