What do freshmen want?

It’s that time of year again—the Fall semester is just around the corner. A new class enters filled with optimism and excitement.

So what do they want from us? In an unscientific study I asked 30 random GT students who belong to the facebook group, “Incoming Freshmen ‘06” that very question. 16 responded.

The top expectation? Resources! Just about all of the respondents expressed desire for a quality collection, with five mentioning a wide range of materials on all topics. Nothing shocking, but the words that kept surfacing were fast, online, and easy.

The second most frequently mentioned desire was quiet space. The library world (or maybe just us?) has been so focused on creating group and social spaces, but students definitely expect to use the library for escape.

This was an interesting exercise because it allowed me to respond directly and personally to each student, answering their questions and promoting specific services that might be of interest to them. There were a lot of good nuggets in their responses, which I guess I could compile and send along to our Admin, but here are a few sound bytes:

• “I hope the library has nooks and crannies so that I could study without seeing my friends every two minutes.”
• “Hopefully you can be able to provide a quiet place for me to study and get away from my roommate if she is loud!”
• “A place to study where silence is enforced (in its own way) and one won't be distracted as one might be in a dorm.”
• “I expect the library to provide research resources and such for papers or whatnot so I don't have to travel around to write a paper.”
• “A large range of books on every topic, a helpful library staff, my high school library staff was loathed like none other, above all, because all they had to offer were unrelenting strictness, and an aptitude for lacking kindness.”
• “A very cozy, dark-mahogany, erudite environment (like the kind u read about in harry potter...lol)"

The Harry Potter comment was interesting because these kids would have been about 10 years old when the first book was published (1998). So they've more or less grown up with the series.

Comments

[Angel]

Interesting they mention a desire for quiet, since, like you point out, it seems the library world is bending over and backwards in creating social spaces in the library. It seems that the louder and more playful the better. And there is a place for collaboration and social spaces, but there should also be respect for those who actually expect a library to be a quiet place. It's one of the things about the whole L2 evangelism that I strongly disagree with. From my days as an undergrad as well as a graduate student, I remember there were moments I wanted to go "hide" in the library to get away from roommate, so on. I don't think that has changed that much, yet you would get the impression from the L2 literature that all we should be doing is making libraries into taverns and playgrounds. It seems the balance is lost. You should compile those replies and send them to the administration. I'd be curious to see what other students in other campuses would say. Best, and keep on blogging.

[steven bell]

Their responses do not surprise me. If you had asked "What is the first thing that comes to mind when you visualize our GT Library" I would suspect you'd get "study space" or "books" as the response. It was good to see one response mention "helpful staff". But what I would really like to see is more association with academic success. For example, wouldn't it be great to have gotten in response to "what do you want (or expect" something like "staff and resources that will help be get top grades" or "help in succeeding academically". Now that's not to say that finding a good space to study doesn't contribute to academic success, but isn't that the most type of connection we can offer. I'd really like to see students, incoming and otherwise, perceiving the library (resources, people, facility, etc) as an extension of what happens in the classroom. We need to further explore how to create those connections, and I think it will have something to do with re-branding and promoting good stories about the library that students can share with each other.

[Jenny Levine]

Angel, I disagree with your statement that L2 proponents have lost balance in the noise/quiet debate. There are always extremes and maybe that's what you've chosen to focus on, but most of the voices I've heard are advocating for zones of space - some quiet, some not-so-quiet. We're not saying let everyone be loud everywhere. We *are* saying examine your signage for negative messages and make sure you accommodate as many needs as possible.

I'm sure even the students in Brian's informal survey have times when they need to use their cell phones and would appreciate positive direction to a space where they can do that. And changing attitudes ("unrelenting strictness") isn't a bad thing, either. It doesn't have to be about extremes. There are a lot of us in the middle.