Document Type

Campus Connection

Publication Date

7-2009

Abstract

At a number of academic libraries, librarians have begun partnering with Athletic Departments to deliver information literacy to freshman athletes. This breakout session will present three different endeavors designed to meet the needs of the incoming student athlete.

UCLA’s College Library has recently expanded collaboration with their athletic department from an annual one-shot for incoming football players to an ongoing partnership integrating library instruction and awareness into the freshman football and basketball teams’ total academic experience.

Arizona State University faced two challenges: help student-athletes learn to use the Library's resources, and train their tutors and mentors. Every ASU freshman athlete takes a one-credit Life Skills course, and working in collaboration with the Office of Student Athlete Development, the Instruction team had the unprecedented opportunity to help design the curriculum for a library-focused unit that would not only teach the athletes and their "academic coaches" about the available resources, but also require the students to write a reflective essay on the experience of searching for relevant information in a library resource.

At Willamette University, the librarians have worked with the Athletic Department to create a program called “GamePlan”. The program, which now includes football, crew, basketball, soccer and volleyball teams, is in its third year. Each Fall semester is treated as an “information challenge”, broken up into seven different 20-minute sessions. The sessions, held in the evenings, are focused on individual topics with explicit objectives.

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