ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


5 7 2  /  C&RL News

The college library as 
guinea pig

By S h erm an  H ayes a n d  M ich ael K ath m an

G etting th e m o st o u t o f  s tu d e n t 
projects

D
o male and female students use the li­
brary differently? How does your order 
process w ork from a business perspect

Should the color scheme o f the library be 
changed? After helping students answer these 
and other questions time after time, year after 
year, it struck us that one of the important roles 
for a college library is that of guinea pig. Our 
model examines the many ways that students 
employ the library as a real-life laboratory or 
subject for management analysis.

Student employees can manage projects
The first category of the model, project man­
agement by student employees, has been used 
to varying degrees of success. Although under­
graduate and most graduate students have not 
had formal library training when they arrive at 
our door, they may bring special talents that 
can be channeled into specific library-designed 
projects. As small college libraries, we cannot 
afford to worry about hierarchical levels when 
our labor pool contains very few full-time staff 
and many student workers.

Student workers are usually employed at 
jobs that are routine in nature. This works well 
for the library in most instances and provides 
good basic help. Because student help turns 
over regularly, the library is not dependent 
upon it for management, policy decisions, train­
ing, and professional duties. Most students are 
content to trade less-than-fully-challenging jobs 
for a break from classrooms and studying, rea­

i

sonable pay, good working conditions, and a 
part-time schedule that responds to their aca­
demic and personal needs.

Many times this talent pool is happy and 
even eager to help on projects a cut above 
their traditional duties. Working with the staff, 
our students have written specialized computer 

ved?a tabase programs (computer wizards are al­
ways welcome), designed and even led spe­
cific signage projects, reconfigured equipment 
for a more practical and interesting workplace 
(a specialty of mechanically minded students), 
transliterated non-Roman title pages for cata­
loged, drawn cartoons for library publications, 
copy-cataloged music (music majors may offer 
special knowledge not available on the staff), 
and drafted and produced floor maps and pa­
tron tracking sheets (drafting skills a must).

When considering possible projects, it is 
important that they be well defined, within the 
general guidelines of the job (do not take ad­
vantage of students without financial reward), 
and designed in relationship to permanent em­
ployees. Don’t offer a challenging project to a 
student if a permanent employee is ready, ea­
ger, and willing to take it on.

The supervisor—who must have a direct 
management style—must work closely with the 
student to make certain he or she does not go 
off in a direction not intended. Students in these 
positions are highly motivated but need and 
deserve the attention special projects demand.

You must also plan for continuity of the 
project after a particular student team member 
graduates. The key parameters of student-em­
ployee projects are an employee/employer re­
lationship with the employer/library control­
ling and guiding the project.

Sh erm a n  H ayes is director o f  th e Solom on R. B a ker Library, B en tle y College, W altham , Massachusetts; 
M ichael K a th m a n  is director o f  libraries, media, a n d  a c a d e m ic  com puting, A lc u in  Library, St. Jo h n  's 
University, Collegeville, M innesota



October 1 9 9 2 / 5 7 3

Student volunteers
The second category of student project work­
ers are volunteers who work on unusual spe­
cial projects initiated and defined by the library. 
“Moving the library” or barcoding the collec­
tion are typical projects for them. They are one­
time efforts shared by much of the academic 
community. Students may be part of the orga­
nizing committee and that makes sense if they 
are going to do the lion’s share of the labor.

A subcategory of this group are student vol­
unteer consultants who work independent of 
their program, classes, or other academic en­
deavors. They may be recruited through a gen­
eral call for students to assist in a special project. 
The payback to the volunteer consultant is the 
experience and opportunity gained through 
working on a real-life task. The key parameters 
for student volunteers are that the library ini­
tiates and manages the project and the stu­
dents work in a one-time volunteer relation­
ship.

Library as guinea pig—for credit
The third category centers on the role of the 
student as project manager for academic pur­
poses. Some aspect of the library may be un­
der study by students as part of their curricu­
lum and research agenda. Either the student’s 
professor or the library may initiate the contact. 
The professor may want to assign an analysis 
and have the students work in a real-life situa­
tion. Or the library may initiate a project in order to 
tap into the expertise available on campus.

Our projects have included a student, with 
the close advice of her faculty member, setting 
up a computerized accounting system for the 
library; marketing students surveying people 
on the noise level of the library; art students 
working up a graphic design for library signs 
and brochures; marketing students doing a 
survey to prioritize student opinions on seat­
ing options for a major addition to a library; 
psychology students researching the advantages 
and disadvantages of various color and light 
schemes for the library; and marketing students 
examining ways to better market library ser­
vices. The advantages of using students in these 
areas are that the library also gets the advice of 
an expert in the field—the faculty member.

This type of faculty contact has a real payoff 
in collection development and bibliographic 
instruction. The better the faculty know the li­
brarians, the easier it is for us. This contact is 
also invaluable when the library needs new or

more resources for the collection, automation, 
or an addition.

When that relationship is dominated by the 
student’s need for an educational experience 
and not by the need of the library for the prod­
uct, the benefit to the library is a bonus. The 
library is usually, after initial negotiations, the 
guinea pig and not the evaluator of the final 
product and may or may not see the results. 
The relationship is one of volunteer student 
workers performing for academic purposes with 
no final formal role in the library.

Students may also use the library for inde­
pendent student projects. The student ap­
proaches a library staff member to seek help 
on a class project. The professor has not 
prenegotiated the ground rules or alerted the 
library that the project is coming. The student 
usually has to convince the staff member that 
their time is needed and it is to the library’s 
advantage to participate. In this subcategory, 
the parameters are based on the student’s aca­
demic need with little formal planning tied to 
the curriculum, library resources, or the profes­
sor. Results are seldom shared with the library 
and there is little interaction other than the usual 
giving of information, time, and advice by the 
library with no expectation of return.

Some individual student and team projects 
have been interviewing the reference staff to 
practice writing job descriptions (Human Re­
sources classes), interviewing the director and 
acquisitions staff and examining documents to 
prepare flowcharts and systems analyses (EDP 
Auditing class), studying the probability of any 
given book being on the library shelf at a given 
time (mathematics classes), interviewing the 
director to meet a requirement for interviewing 
a manager (management classes), and inter­
viewing staff members to determine if graduate 
student library orientation should be changed 
(independent study). We have participated in 
numerous student surveys concerning library 
services for marketing research classes and au­
tomation studies by computer students on al­
most every aspect of our operations. The li­
brary has even served as a model for still 
photography and video class projects.

Each institution should determine the mix 
of guinea pig student projects they want to 
encourage and the nature of the institution may 
make a difference on the emphasis of the 
projects. Bentley College, one of the schools 
examined for this article, is a business-empha­
sis institution. Their projects are usually focused



5 7 4  /  C&RL N ew s

on personnel, computing, and accounting. St. 
Jo h n ’s University draws heavily from business 
and accounting courses with additional project 
inquiries coming from art, psychology, math­
ematics, and sociology students.

Student-initiated projects must be viewed 
with several caveats in mind. Part of a college’s 
role is to offer learning opportunities outside 
of the classroom. The library may be a logical 
place to offer that experience and librarians 
should embrace that role as the advantages 
are many. As a guinea pig, the library is help­
ing the curriculum and its relationship with fac­
ulty and students becomes richer. The experi­
ence can be fun for the staff, particularly with a 
captive audience that is really interested in what 
you are doing. The library’s image as a friendly 
helpful place is enhanced and you may even 
learn something through an in-depth exami­
nation of a particular part of your operation.

Yet, there are pitfalls to becoming a guinea 
pig. Real guinea pigs get fed for their efforts; 
however, the library is mainly a giver and not 
a receiver except in the area of library-initiated 
projects. Time requirements and interruptions 
need to be balanced against the library’s main 
duties and goals. Many students or project 
teams are not sure o f w hat they w ant to do

and the library’s time commitment may be sig­
nificant. Students may work on very inflexible 
schedules and expect you to be responsive. 
You should not do their projects for them ei­
ther in information provided or design. Stu­
dent groups also should not upset the staff or 
be privy to confidential information.

If you consider the class project/guinea pig 
model as beneficial, you should support it and 
look for ways to expand it appropriate to your 
library and student body. By all means, docu­
ment the number, complexity, and costs in­
volved as it will help you demonstrate to aca­
demic m anagem ent and faculty that being a 
willing guinea pig is one more way that your 
library serves the purposes o f the college.

Conclusion
In all academic libraries student projects are 
part of the scene. Smaller libraries frequently 
find that student projects can be especially help­
ful. In most cases, students are fun to work 
with. They are often amazed at the complexity 
o f the library and can offer insights on how  to 
improve its operations. Those reasons alone 
are sufficient “rew ard” for most of us to enthu­
siastically accept our role as project managers 
or guinea pigs for student projects. ■