C&RL News March 2020 118 Erica Lopez, formerly of Stephen F. Austin State University, is now Chemical and Biological Sciences librarian at the University of Houston, erlopez2@ central.uh.edu, and Tina Oswald is research librarian IV at Stephen F. Austin State University’s Ralph W. Steen Library, email: toswald@sfasu.edu © 2020 Erica Lopez and Tina Oswald Erica Lopez and Tina Oswald Taking root Librarians help new Forestry students create a learning community Librarians have studied and discussed library anxiety ever since Constance Mel- lon coined the term in 1986.1 While it may be challenging for librarians to imagine any anxiety about coming into a library and using the available resources, students experience a multitude of stress- ors as they embark on their college jour- ney. Many are taking college-level courses for the first time. Some might have a room- mate they know, or not. (Sometimes the ones you know are a bigger problem than the ones you do not.) Some may be juggling a full course load with work or family respon- sibilities. Many are on their own for the first time in their lives. The library may be a draw for some as a place to study or explore in this new environment. However, getting up the nerve to step outside of what is known, and inside somewhere new, can be quite intimidating. Librarians strive to combat this anxiety on college and university campuses. Often, the first step is getting the new students in the door of the library and helping them to establish a connection with someone in the building. Rachael Muszkiewicz argues that personal interaction with a librarian may alleviate some of the library anxiety that students feel.2 Further- more, every part of the campus in higher education is urged to assist in recruitment and retention in most strategic plans. Tammy J. Eschedor Voelker as- serts that if librarians can become involved in learning communi- ties, they can assist in the student retention piece.3 A lear ning com- munity is defined as “an intentionally de- veloped community that will promote and maximize learning.”4 This building of com- munity is of the utmost importance to new, Welcome sign for library portion of the 2018 Root Camp. mailto:erlopez2%40central.uh.edu?subject= mailto:erlopez2%40central.uh.edu?subject= mailto:toswald%40sfasu.edu?subject= March 2020 119 C&RL News incoming freshman and transfer students. There is a very human need to feel a sense of belonging with one’s peers. Common- alities among interests and learning goals help to forge relationships among students. Students agree that an atmosphere that fosters community, getting to know others, and offers opportunities for collaborative activities are elements they look for in their college experience.5 As a result, many in higher education institutions have taken the definition of “learning community” a bit further to include “an interdisciplinary focus with attention paid to students’ academic and social development.”6 The creation of these communities at the freshman level, usually through first-year programs, is a way to make a new place, new people, and new learning opportunities more accessible.7 The history of Stephen F. Austin State University (SFASU) began in Nacogdoches, Texas, as a teachers’ college in 1923. Since that time, the campus has grown to more than 400 acres, many of those covered in trees. This created the perfect setting for the Arthur Temple College of Forestry and Agriculture. In 1946, Forestry became a field of study on the SFASU campus. It is now one of the South’s top forestry schools with four majors and more than ten areas of emphasis and degrees at the bachelor, master’s, and Ph.D. levels. While the university has an enrollment of more than 12,000 students, the College of Forestry’s enrollment of under- graduate students has steadily grown in the last several years from 205 undergraduates in the 2015 fall semester to 305 undergraduates in the 2018 fall semester. To lessen library anxiety, and play an active role in promoting the development of new learning communities by connecting with students early in their careers, librarians at SFASU were able to snag a little piece of time during the Forestry freshman orienta- tion session called Root Camp. Root Camp is a weekend-long orientation for incoming freshman and transfer students in the basic skills that are necessary throughout their col- lege career as Forestry students. These skills include using GPS units, tree measurement, sampling techniques, wildlife identification, climbing techniques, timbersports, and more. In addition to offering a crash course on field techniques, Root Camp also includes social activities and fun for the purposes of building and fostering a learning community. All of these components are important be- cause successful learning communities must use experiences with peers, in the form of activities geared toward educational, social, Library portion of Root Camp, group photo, spring 2018. C&RL News March 2020 120 and physical elements.8 Most research on learning communities agrees that the “most powerful source of influence on an under- graduate student’s academic and personal development is the peer group.”9 The first core course for an undergraduate degree in the Forestry program is Forestry 111: Careers and Competencies in Forestry, and it has the highest enrollment of any other course in the Forestry program. Prior to September 2015, the library session for this course occurred in the Forestry building in front of a class of approximately 65 stu- dents. The librarian delivered a lecture- style introduction to library resources and demonstrated basic search tips and tech- niques on the library website. The setting was not ideal because students did not have computers in front of them to follow along and perform search activities, and the class was too large for the library computer labs to accommodate. Still, the course pro- fessor and librarian felt it important to offer students an introduction to their liaison librarian and to library research. When a new Forestry faculty member took over Forestry 111, she instituted the required weekend-long Root Camp orienta- tion for Forestry majors as an expansion of the course. Forestry 111 and its component Root Camp would become an introduction not only to fields of study in the area of Forestry, but an introduction to the learn- ing community with which students would be a part of throughout their undergraduate careers. The new faculty member wrote about her plans for the first Root Camp for the Arthur Temple College of Forestry and Agriculture newsfeed. An avid reader of the newsfeed, the librarian reached out to the Root Camp organizer to inquire about getting involved. As luck would have it, the organizer had been looking for an activity to fill the Sunday afternoon time slot. The librarian began creating a library orientation for Root Camp participants. The students would already be divided into smaller groups throughout the weekend, so the librar- ian developed a sched- ule that would have the existing groups rotate throughout the library for different activities. Groups were small enough that a produc- tive library information literacy session could be offered in library computer labs, and the time slot was generous enough that students could be introduced to additional services within the library. The librarian was aware, as David V. Loertscher and Blanche Woolls note, that information- seekers are quite com- fortable conducting re- search on their own, often using Google and overlooking the resources available through the library website.10 Therefore, this occasion to meet with a group of new students at the beginning of their college career was seen as an opportunity to supplement students’ existing information seeking habits with in- formation and digital literacy concepts, and an introduction to library resources. Librarians need to be recognized by students as information professionals who can offer assistance to them in the research process, and this was the perfect chance for Linda Reynolds, director of ETRC, and a Root Camp student, during the 2019 library portion of Root Camp. March 2020 121 C&RL News the librarian to carve out a position as a cote- acher with the class instructor and increase library visibility. As noted by Sue F. Phelps and Nicole Campbell, when faculty and li- brarians work together, the relationship they forge has a positive effect on the learning process for the students.11 The Librarian and Forestry faculty member decided to build this relationship and produce positive outcomes for the students. On Sunday, September 13, 2015, Ralph W. Steen Library welcomed 62 students, divided into four groups, from the Arthur Temple College of Forestry and Agricul- ture to the library portion of Root Camp. Students rotated in their groups through an information literacy session in a computer lab with a hands-on searching assignment, an information session with the Academic Assistance and Resource Center, an archives show-and-tell with the East Texas Research Center, and a library scavenger hunt. The scavenger hunt required students to print a document they would need for their next lab assignment from the Forestry 111 online LibGuide, locate the Forestry librar- ian’s office, visit the Forestry and Agriculture area of the stacks, and retrieve USDA mate- rials from the Government Documents Col- lection. Upon completion of the scavenger hunt, Root Camp participants were sent to a computer lab in the library that they had not seen during their library activities in order to pick up goody bags. The bags included a photo business card for their librarian, promotional materials for additional library services, snacks, locally grown kiwis, and bottles of water. The librarian scheduled a follow-up visit to the Forestry 111 class to deliver a brief survey regarding the event. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Students especially appreciated the kiwis, which were grown on campus, included in their snack bags. The majority of students felt that their time in the archives area looking at old forestry photographs, documents, and artifacts was the most enjoyable. Prior to Root Camp, the vast majority of students may never have been exposed to the archival materials in their subject areas. The library portion of Root Camp now takes the place of the in-class lecture-style library session previously offered to the Forestry 111 class. This benefits the students by offering them a more productive introduc- tion to library services, getting them into the library building, and giving back a day of course lecture time. One change implement- ed since the first Root Camp is the inclusion of the library feedback questions in the Root Camp survey distributed by the instructor for the entire weekend of activities. This prevents students from having to complete multiple surveys related to the event. The forestry faculty member shares the feedback from students with the organizing librarian once the survey is complete, and the librarian shares the feedback with participating library departments as they plan future iterations of the library Root Camp activities. For each iteration of Root Camp, librar- ians and staff from different departments in the library meet to plan the event. The event offers library departments, who do not typically interact with students, an op- portunity to work with them. Interested representatives from departments who do not have their own library Root Camp ses- sion also offer assistance in the planning and delivery of library activities. Catalogers and others are provided the opportunity to be a part of a large student orientation event. The library’s inclusion in the Root Camp orienta- tion event speaks to how Ralph W. Steen Library is viewed as an essential resource with which students in the Arthur Temple College of Forestry must be acquainted at the beginning of and throughout their aca- demic careers. Notes 1. Constance A. Mellon, “Library Anxiety: A Grounded Theory and Its Development,” College & Research Libraries 47, no. 2 (1986): 160–65. 2. Rachael Muszkiewicz, “Get to Know Your Librarian: How a Simple Orientation Program C&RL News March 2020 122 Helped Alleviate Library Anxiety,” Public Services Quarterly 13, no. 4 (2017): 223–40. 3. Tammy J. Eschedor Voelker, “The Li- brary and My Learning Community: First Year Students’ Impressions of Library Services,” Reference & User Services Quarterly 46, no. 2 (2006): 72–80. 4. Oscar T. Lenning and Larry H. Ebbers, “The Powerful Potential of Learning Commu- nities: Improving Education for the Future,” ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report 26, no. 6 (1999): 8. 5. Barbara Leigh Smith, “Learning Com- munities and Liberal Education,” Academe 89, no. 1 (January–February 2003): 17. 6. Anne Goodsell Love, “The Growth and Current State of Learning Communi- ties in Higher Education,” in Discipline- Centered Learning Communities: Creating Connections Among Students and Faculty Within a Major, ed. Kimberly Buch and Kenneth E. Barron (San Francisco: Jossey- Bass, 2012), 7. 7. Barbara Leigh Smith et al., Learning Communities: Reforming Undergraduate Education (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004). 8. Nancy E. Frazier, “In the Loop,” College & Undergraduate Libraries 13, no. 1 (2006): 23. 9. Alexander W. Astin, “What Matters in College?” Liberal Education 79, no. 4 (1993): 7. 10. David V. Loertscher and Blanche Wools, “Librarians—Moving from Being ‘the elephant in the Room’ to Becoming Central to the Learning Process,” in The Road to Infor- mation Literacy: Librarians As Facilitators of Learning, ed. Roisin Gwyer, Ruth Stubbings, and Graham Walton (De Gruyter Saur, 2012). 11. Sue F. Phelps and Nicole Campbell, “Commitment and Trust in Librarian-Faculty Relationships: A Systematic Review of the Litera- ture,” The Journal of Academic Librarianship 38, no.1 (2012): 16. Constructing the Sacred Visibility and Ritual Landscape at the Egyptian Necropolis of Saqqara Elaine Sullivan Utilizing 3D technologies, Constructing the Sacred addresses ancient ritual landscape from a unique perspective to examine development at the complex, long-lived archaeological site of Saqqara, Egypt. Sullivan focuses on how changes in the built and natural environment affected burial rituals at the temple due to changes in visibility. Flipping the top-down view prevalent in archeology to a more human-centered perspective puts the focus on the dynamic evolution of an ancient site that is typically viewed as static. This publication is among the first to push the boundaries to include interactive 3D models that can be navigated both spatially and temporally. Explore now at constructingthesacred.org. Visit sup.org/digital for more information on our digital publications. S T A N F O R D U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S sup.org http://blog.supdigital.org/