2015 Charleston Library Conference

Trying to increase awareness and utilization of your resources and services? A recent survey done by Cengage Learning said that 75% of college students say they wish they took more advantage of the library and its resources; yet, 70% of them do not ask their campus librarians for help with course assignments. This lively lunch will feature a User Experience Specialist demonstrating how to use thumbnail personas and Agile story mapping techniques. These methods are a quick and easy way to help ensure library programs and services hit the mark with students, faculty, and stakeholders alike. Librarians will be coached in how to build personas that can be used to better understand their faculty and students’ individual needs and gain the knowledge to map out different student types and more easily create targeted “library playbooks” that cover various groups of student learning styles. The tools will also assist in prioritization of the many different student types and faculty groups with whom librarians engage. Coming out of this lively lunch, librarians will have the basic information they need to begin to build personas that can be implemented in marketing the library, making improvements to their web site, and building out internal materials to train staff, all in an effort to maximize the library’s resources and services in a thoughtful and strategic manner.