Pop-Goes-The-Library! Using a Pop-Up Library to Reach STEM Students

Abstract

Abstract Pop-Goes-The-Library! Using a Pop-Up Library to Reach STEM Students A Pop-Up Library program was started at the New Jersey Institute of Technology as an innovative means of outreach and education for our science and engineering students to increase library visibility by promoting and providing library services outside of the library. Due to program requirements undergraduate science and engineering students’ focus on fundamentals like introductory math, physics, laboratory and design assignments early in their major. This often results in fewer opportunities than liberal arts students to interact with library resources and librarians until they are farther along in their undergraduate studies. Postponing library use may contribute to a reluctance to seek help when library resources are needed. The benefits of taking the library to the students include providing opportunities for the library staff to meet more students and faculty on their turf, promote library research resources, and create follow-up appointments for one-on-one research assistance. This paper discusses the implementation details of the program, such as, determining the best locations, the marketing and publicity strategies, and the types of resources and services that were used. The effectiveness of the pop-up library program was assessed by the popularity, satisfaction, and feedback of users surveyed. It was concluded that using innovative ways of promoting and providing library reference services encourages interaction with science and engineering students who may not primarily seek the library as a means of support and assistance.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 2 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.