A Glimpse of the Libraries through Undergrads’ Eyes

Abstract

Beginning in the summer of 2021, Alexandrea Glenn and Michelle Nolan launched a pilot undergraduate peer mentoring program and hired a cohort of four undergraduate students. Over the course of the summer semester, these students attended weekly seminars, explored the George A. Smathers Libraries, and created their own “Undergraduate Guide to the Libraries” aimed at first-year undergraduate students. In this Source article, Alexandrea and Michelle will briefly reflect on their own experiences entering academic libraries as college students, describe the peer mentoring pilot program and the creation of the guide, and showcase the perspectives of the student cohort. We interviewed the students from the cohort to hear more about what they learned, why they decided to make their guide, and what recommendations they have for better connecting the Libraries to the undergraduate student body.