{"id":74,"date":"2022-10-01T21:28:34","date_gmt":"2022-10-02T01:28:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/college-fluency\/?p=74"},"modified":"2023-12-14T08:23:16","modified_gmt":"2023-12-14T13:23:16","slug":"announcement-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/college-fluency\/2022\/10\/01\/announcement-post\/","title":{"rendered":"College Fluency Capacity Building: BMCC Library and Ithaka S+R Launch New Research Project"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

The Borough of Manhattan Community College Library is excited to announce it will be partnering with Ithaka S+R over the next 2 \u00bd years (2022-25) on new <\/span>IMLS-funded<\/span><\/a> research exploring librarians\u2019 role in college fluency. The <\/span>College Fluency Capacity Building research project<\/span><\/a> will equip library faculty and staff to address new and urgent challenges they are facing in their profession as they are called on to meet the changing information needs of the students they serve.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

As the type of information that students are seeking has been significantly impacted by social, demographic, economic, and technological changes, students are facing new challenges in navigating complex institutional and administrative <\/span>bureaucracies, and\u00a0 librarians find themselves increasingly required to master an expanded concept of information skills. Our research team has <\/span>coined a novel term<\/span><\/a> to describe this increasingly ur<\/span>gent phenomenon: College fluency<\/span><\/i> is the knowledge and corresponding set of abilities that enable students and staff<\/span> to effectively locate and use relevant college services, programs, and resources, which can help students to successfully engage with and self-advocate within the culture and bureaucracy of higher education institutions in order to achieve their goals.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

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(image credit: “Maze”<\/a> by BlenderTimer<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n

Alongside the role of helping students navigate more traditional academic, journal, or archival information sources, there is a need for librarians to evolve and develop new knowledge and skills to answer students\u2019 questions about navigating the university environment and culture itself. By strengthening community college librarians\u2019 knowledge of and skillful fluency in more dimensions of college navigation, they will be able to meet the needs of students who come to the library for support accessing resources and services that can benefit their material, financial, and other needs.<\/span><\/p>\r\n

The stakes of college fluency are high for students and librarians; the culture, nomenclature, and organizing principles of U.S. higher education are often opaque to students, and even sometimes to staff ensconced in departmental silos, creating barriers to success. This opaqueness can make navigating the services a college offers a challenge, especially for non-curricular needs that are served by myriad offices with unfamiliar names. One student, interviewed during prior <\/span>IMLS-funded research<\/span><\/a> conducted by BMCC and Ithaka S+R, astutely describes the complicated landscape of college: \u201cFor me the college is just so big. Sometimes you get bounced back and forth from departments to departments\u2026 you get lost in bureaucracy\u2026 sometimes you don\u2019t even know how to navigate the whole system.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Providing support to students for non-curricular information needs is not a straightforward task for librarians, and further research is necessary to uncover what resources and practices community college libraries need to increase college fluency on their campuses.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Over the next two and a half years, our research project will focus on unmet needs related to college fluency for community college librarians and students through a series of case studies and national survey.\u00a0 This research seeks to enhance the abilities of academic librarians and library workers to help community college students successfully access and navigate institutional resources and services for their holistic needs. The findings of our project will drive trainings and workshops to increase librarians\u2019 college fluency and their capacity to support it so that students may have improved access to the resources and services that can positively impact their financial, mental and social health.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

We look forward to sharing insights as our research develops. For more information on project activities, project team members and advisors, <\/span>explore this project website<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Borough of Manhattan Community College Library is excited to announce it will be partnering with Ithaka S+R over the next 2 \u00bd years (2022-25) on new IMLS-funded research exploring librarians\u2019 role in college fluency. The College Fluency Capacity Building research project will equip library faculty and staff to address new and urgent challenges they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"portfolio_post_id":0,"portfolio_citation":"","portfolio_annotation":"","openlab_post_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-74","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-updates","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/college-fluency\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/college-fluency\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/college-fluency\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/college-fluency\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/college-fluency\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/college-fluency\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":149,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/college-fluency\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions\/149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/college-fluency\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/college-fluency\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/college-fluency\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}