Building an Inclusive Community: Hosting an International Graduate Student Orientation

In 2018, library faculty at a large, public land grant university formed a working group tasked with assessing the information needs of graduate students and implementing action plans to support this user population. From the beginning, the librarians recognized that graduate students are not a homogeneous group. Desiring a more nuanced understanding of these students, they held focus groups in 2019 to explore students’ experiences with navigating graduate school and, more specifically, the University library. One sub-group of particular interest to them was international graduate students, who make up a sizable percentage of the graduate student population on campus. International students in the focus groups reported that they found academic libraries in the United States to be very different from libraries in their home countries. They also revealed that they felt intimidated by American libraries and often did not know how, or whom, to ask for help. This feedback was the impetus for developing a library orientation event in 2022 specifically targeted to newly arrived international graduate students. The orientation hosted by the library, which has since become an annual event, features small group tours of the library’s major service points, a presentation by a graduate student peer consultant from the University writing center, a shared meal, and a “meet and greet” for graduate students and subject librarians. Librarians with foreign language skills are tapped to be tour guides, and library graduate student staff are invited to join student participants at dinner. The program is structured to encourage community building by providing opportunities for new students, graduate student peers, and library staff to interact informally. By providing a human face to the library’s research support services, the library orientation offers participants a tangible social network to support their learning. The panelists will discuss elements of the library orientation that worked particularly well and address key ...