Reconnecting with Students: Navigating Library Outreach in the Midst of COVID Burnout

Background: In Spring of 2021, our Library Outreach and Marketing Committee began to reassess our library outreach plan based on feedback and trends we had noticed from students. The two main trends we were able to identify were that our students were not as engaged in extracurricular activities as they had been in years past and many were experiencing email fatigue. Using this information, we created a plan to streamline our communication with students. Our new outreach plan was thus created in order to strengthen our library's message and meet students where they were at.

Description: Our outreach strategy can be broken down into three main components:
Communication: After receiving feedback from our students that they were receiving too many emails, we focused the bulk of our communication into a quarterly newsletter, called "Boxer Library Updates," that included all library highlights, events, and important updates for the quarter.
Feedback: Because we were experiencing lower engagement with our students a year into COVID, we decided to focus our student feedback efforts to our Student Library Advisory Committee. This committee is elected annually and is composed of students from every college on campus who act as ambassadors for the library.
Partnerships: In order to receive more exposure and strengthen our relationships on campus, we partnered with student focused departments to offer library events when these departments larger engagement initiatives.

Conclusion: This outreach plan is still active and is continuing to be developed as we enter into new phases of the pandemic. Our Outreach and Marketing Committee continues to meet weekly to assess the outcomes of our library outreach plan. In these meetings we discuss verbal and written feedback we have received from students, attendance numbers at events, newsletter blog post views, and new campus partnership opportunities. We hope our attendance numbers continue to grow and we continue to receive positive feedback, however if there is one thing we have learned over last unprecedented year, it is to have the flexibility to adapt.