Focusing on the First Year Conference Presentation

Here our the slides from our presentation for the Focusing on the First Year Conference, Feb. 13, 2013 at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.


The Libraries' Role in the Success of First Year Students

Location: Room 326
It's standard advice for a college freshman: Use the library. But how many students take that advice? And what evidence exists that library use has a positive impact on student success? Which of the many services now provided by libraries are most important to students just beginning their undergraduate careers?

Working with the Office of Institutional Research (OIR), the University Libraries collected data on how people interacted with the library in Fall 2011 and Spring 2012. Although limited to access points where an Internet ID can be captured, the resulting dataset provides the most complete picture of library use currently available at any institution. Moving beyond the overall counts, demographic data from OIR allowed the Libraries to aggregate use across categories like college and status.

Armed with data describing library use by first year students, along with the demographic, college environment, and prior academic factors known to influence student success, OIR performed regression analyses to discover relationships among different types of library use and the student success factors of GPA and student retention. Our presentation outlines the observed relationships and details our investigations into how much and what types of library use help new students the most.


Libraries Role Success FYStudents handout.pdf