Reflecting on Student Engagement and Renewing Efforts to Diversify LIS Student Pipeline

Background: A government-funded organization commissioned a study resulting in a dataset identifying U.S. Library and Information Science (LIS) graduate programs focusing on health and science courses, faculty expertise, and diversity of students in individual programs.

Building on this information, a collaboration of researchers from across the U.S. developed a method designed to build student engagement programs, increase diversity in medical librarianship, and improve the medical librarian training pipeline.

The research team was established through a common interest to address the deficit of well-trained and qualified medical librarians, especially amongst early career librarians, and the lack of diversity among medical librarians.

Description: The research team shared student engagement activities they participate in to better understand the collective knowledge of the team. From this, two student engagement priorities areas were identified: provide quality student experiences and increase interest in health information access related training.

Area one focused on developing a guide designed to support professionals interested in hosting students including tips on how to effectively recruit students and mentor them during their practicum or internship. The guide includes reliable messaging tips with an emphasis on improving diversity in the LIS pipeline and an evaluation tool designed to assess student’s internship/practicum experience.

Area two focused on recruiting and guiding LIS instructors teaching health information courses to get them approved to meet the core competencies of the various Medical Library Association’s specializations so their students can apply for additional credentials and improve their portfolio.

Conclusion: The primary measurable outcome expected is to increase engagement of LIS students from underrepresented populations by participation in meaningful internship/practicum programs, and participation in the MLA specialization programs. It is also expected that offering informed and responsive student engagement opportunities will strengthen working relationships with LIS programs and health sciences libraries as well as library professional organizations and MLA.