Listening to Student Voices

Listening to Student Voices

Library Student Advisory Board

Amelia Lancaster ’22, Library Student Advisory Board chair, library event and outreach student associate

The Library Student Advisory Board (LSAB) is a relatively new Student Executive Committee (EC) subcommittee, created last academic year with the goal of bringing a distinct student perspective to the improvement of library services, spaces, collections and programming. After all, the library is one of the most central units on campus, and students take advantage of it in a variety of ways through all four years of their undergraduate education. By participating in LSAB, students get the opportunity to freely express their opinions and perspectives on the library and work directly with library administration to implement new initiatives.

LSAB is starting strong this year with 10 student members, seven who are new to the board and ready to bring fresh ideas and perspectives! We hope to continue initiatives from last year in addition to creating new ones. Highlights from last year’s board activities include the creation and approval of new library signage, acquisition of a new selfcheckout machine for the fourth floor and several members’ participation in the interview process for the new University Librarian. Those are just some of LSAB’s activities, but my personal favorite was our finals study break. LSAB set up a table with fruit, cookies and drinks for students to grab while studying for finals in Leyburn, as well as a suggestion box for them to submit suggestions or thoughts about the library. It was a wonderful opportunity for us to advertise LSAB as a new committee and connect with other students. Despite the challenges COVID-19 brings to enacting library initiatives and events, everyone has been enthusiastically bringing new ideas to the table. One exciting project we’re working on is getting LSAB’s very own webpage up and running. We hope that this will make us an even more accessible resource for the student body to voice their opinions or suggestions about the library. Part of the page will include a permanent online suggestion box (though we do have a physical box in the library, as well). As a student-led group, we hope that in the coming years we can work to make all library spaces inviting and useful for the whole community, but most importantly our fellow W&L students.

Amelia Lancaster ’22 & Rose Hein ’22 give out healthy snacks during finals week in Fall 2019 and solicit feedback about the library.

Contact LSAB at lsab@wlu.edu.

2020/2021 LSAB Members

Temi Adeyanju ’21

Sam Choi ’21

Matt Condon ’22

Rose Hein ’22

Amelia Lancaster ’22

Kit Lombard ’23

Kayla Monaghan ’24

Posi Oluwakuyide ’24

Tiffani Thomason ’22

Madison Williams ’23

*Librarian Advisors: Elizabeth Teaff & Emily Cook