Academic Library Services to International Students Interest Group

Hello,

I would like to put together a library orientation for international students for the coming fall semester. I have not worked in any  library that it's been done. Are any of you involved in this? And if so, what kinds of activities are you doing?

Tulane doesn't have a large international student population and I think there has been a lack of coordination among campus units. I know the library has not been contributing and I would like for us to begin.

Does anyone have any great examples?

Thanks,

Hannah White

We have given an orientation for international students at Penn State for a number of years. We organize this in conjunction with the international students office on our campus. We start with a general introduction to the library (how to check out books, our ask a librarian service, course reserves, etc.) and brief info about our catalog and some of our databases. We also talk about our collection of international newspapers. Each student gets a raffle ticket and we hold a prize drawing for a t-shirt, coffee mug, etc. The students then go with a subject specialist librarian to the subject library corresponding to their major or discipline (engineering, business, etc.) for a tour and general info.

We are a very large institution with close to 4,000 international students, so your situation may be somewhat different, but I hope this helps. Feel free to contact me for more info.

Dawn

Thank you, Dawn, for your reply. I'm sure we can put together something very similar and I'm grateful for the suggestions. I suppose my real question is this: how do we acculturate someone from a closed-stack library/cranky librarian country to the kind of services and access those students have here?

Thanks,

Hannah