Orienting Medical Students to the Medical Library – A First Critical Step in Developing Students into Lifelong and Self-Directed Learners

Background: The pandemic has transformed the delivery of library services, prompting immediate needs to change existing modalities for reaching out to students, faculty, and staff. Library orientation is essential for promoting and teaching about library services, resources, and instructional programs. How do librarians provide the best orientation experience for students and set the initial important stage for students to recognize the value of the library and to utilize library services and resources to their advantage? This presentation will describe how one medical library innovated its approach to providing a successful library orientation for M1 medical students during the pandemic.

Description: The OUWB School of Medicine provides a mandatory one-week orientation for new medical students during the first week of each August. The medical library orientation integrated into the medical school orientation serves to orient students to their new learning environment. The Library launched its virtual orientation planning phase at the cusp of the pandemic. As the school orientation became packed with a wide array of sessions and events, the entire library orientation time slot was cut to 20 minutes of virtual time with 125 medical students using WebEx. It became unfeasible to provide an effective learning experience for all students merely through a synchronous virtual library orientation. The final redesigned orientation included virtual space and website tours using Adobe, a pre-recorded introduction video to the library information mastery instructional theme, small group, 20-minute synchronous sessions where students met their “personal librarians” for a brief overview of services and a Q&A, and instructional help sheets outlining how to locate learning resources.

Conclusion: The library pivoted to designing a blended library orientation and successfully executed the plan that resulted in a seamless, effective, and efficient virtual orientation. It optimized medical students’ learning experience and ushered them on their way to becoming lifelong and self-directed learners.