college library case study

College & Research Libraries ( C&RL ) is the official, bi-monthly, online-only scholarly research journal of the Association of College & Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association.

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Jennifer Mayer is Associate Professor, Head of Library Research Services at University of Northern Colorado; email: [email protected] .

Rachel Dineen is Assistant Professor, Information Literacy and Undergraduate Support at University of Northern Colorado; email: [email protected] .

Angela Rockwell is Data Analyst & Report Writer at University of Northern Colorado; email: [email protected] .

Jayne Blodgett is Assistant Dean of Libraries at University of Northern Colorado; email: [email protected] .

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Undergraduate Student Success and Library Use: A Multimethod Approach

Jennifer Mayer, Rachel Dineen, Angela Rockwell, and Jayne Blodgett *

How libraries affect student success has become an increasingly important question to many academic librarians. To investigate this phenomenon, we explored student success via two approaches in this multimethod study: 1) through individual student interviews to capture the student voice; and 2) through hierarchical linear and logistic modeling of institutional data to capture the institutional perspective. Through the qualitative component, students articulated how they define success and how the library contributes to their success, especially in terms of providing a sense of belonging and facilitating the work of a community of scholars. The quantitative data provides additional context by demonstrating a small positive correlation between use of library resources and student persistence, further highlighting the community building impact of the libraries.

Introduction

We convened a research team in 2017 consisting of two librarians, a data analyst, and a library administrator to investigate what role, if any, the library plays in undergraduate students’ success. We specifically examined whether correlations exist between library services and student persistence. Our study considered students who enrolled in fall 2017, enrolled for classes again in fall 2018, or completed a bachelor’s degree in fall 2017 or later but before fall 2018. Our research questions were:

• How does use of specific library services correlate to persistence for undergraduate students?
• Is there a positive correlation between the number of uses of library services and academic achievement for undergraduate students?
• How does use of library services correlate to academic achievement for undergraduate students?

The study evolved to include a qualitative piece that addresses the following additional research questions:

• How do students define academic success?
• What role can or does the library play in student academic success?

In our research, we found that in much of the literature of academic libraries and higher education, the terms “academic success” and “student success” are often used interchangeably. We also found that these concepts are incredibly difficult to define because they are influenced by a myriad of factors 1 and have the potential to vary depending on the interested party. 2 Therefore, for the purposes of this article, we will use the phrase “student success” to describe a collection of factors that include academic achievement (GPA), acquisition of desired skills and competencies, persistence from one year to the next, and personal satisfaction and achievement (as determined by students). 3 While measures such as postcollege performance and attainment of educational objectives could prove to be important metrics for student success, they are beyond the scope of this research study.

We view this multimethod research project as a way to inform strategies for improving how the library contributes to student success. Despite the recent national trend of an increased pressure from institutional administrations to demonstrate the value of library services in academia, this study was proactively conceived by librarians, three years before a formal student success initiative was unveiled at our university. Our motivation has been, and continues to be, improving library resources and services for our community. Our project also coincides with a university strategic enrollment and student success initiative. Through active involvement in this initiative, we plan to communicate our findings to the university community and use them to help inform larger, student-centered decisions. By including one-on-one student interviews in addition to quantitative data, we believe that sharing the students’ personal opinions about success and the library provides a unique perspective in the growing body of literature on library value studies. Although our findings are for our local organization, the methods of our study are scalable to other institutions in a number of ways detailed in this article; others could implement this multimethod approach, collaborate with a data analyst, map to their institutions’ student success initiatives, or integrate a qualitative piece to include the student voice in the findings.

University Context and Student Success Initiative

The University of Northern Colorado (UNC) is a regional public university holding the Carnegie classification of Doctoral/Professional University. UNC’s spring 2019 undergraduate enrollment was: 8,854 total undergraduates enrolled, 42 percent of whom are first-generation college students; 31 percent are Pell grant eligible; and 65 percent are female. 4 The first-generation and Pell grant demographics were important to include in our quantitative study because many UNC students are members of those groups. Counting graduate students, UNC’s total student enrollment in spring 2019 was 11,949. In FY2019, the university libraries, both the James A. Michener Library and the Howard M. Skinner Music Library, were visited by 516,250 people, and staff checked out 71,653 physical items. The university libraries have a total of 131 desktop computers and 17 laptops available for student use. Michener Library has the largest consolidation of computers on the university campus. During the 2019 fiscal year, librarians taught nine credit-bearing information literacy courses, facilitated 315 individual “one-shot” instruction sessions, and provided 263 research consultations. During the fall 2018 and spring 2019 semesters, Michener Library was open 107 hours a week. The university libraries are committed to improvement through continual librarywide and departmental assessment of our resources and services. In addition to having an assessment committee, which focuses on a different year-long project each academic year, including conducting LibQual+® every three years, individual departments conduct their own assessment projects to improve instruction and curriculum, services, resources, and library space.

In 2018, UNC convened a steering committee to create the Strategic Enrollment and Student Success Plan (SESS). The SESS vision states that UNC “leverages its teacher/scholar model and integrated network of coaching and support resources to attract and provide students with the education, experiences, and opportunities they need to succeed and achieve their desired outcomes.” 5 The SESS plan defines the “pillars” of student success as: academic ability; financial capability; sense of belonging; and wellness. 6 Guiding goals of the SESS plan include 78 percent first-year retention by 2023, 38 percent 4-year graduation rate, and 58 percent 6-year graduation rate. 7 At a March 2, 2018, University of Northern Colorado board of trustees meeting, UNC Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Michelle Quinn shared that the best comparator for student retention is the fall-to-fall retention rate, which was used in our study.

UNC’s SESS plan has four goals, three of which focus on different areas of improvement related to persistence and graduation rates. The library can and should play an important part in helping the university achieve those goals. By using a multimethod research strategy, we can see the role the library plays in both student success at the macro level (such as persistence and GPA), focusing on the library’s academic-related work, while the feedback allows us to explore individual student responses, which often relate more to the student-support side of the library’s work (like providing a safe, welcoming space for a community of scholars that is often open for extended study hours past midnight). By combining the two approaches, the library can better respond to student needs in a holistic manner.

Literature Review

Dating back several decades, there is an expansive array of literature in higher education focused on student persistence and student success. Vincent Tinto made several observations about student success in his 2013 South African lectures at the Regional Symposia Council on Higher Education that illustrate this is an area of global concern. In his Lecture 2, “Access without Support Is Not Opportunity,” Tinto discusses the “necessity of access and support to enable students to succeed in the university.” 8 In a study focused on the effects of student engagement on first-year college students’ grades and persistence, George D. Kuh, Ty M. Cruce, Rick Shoup, Jillian Kinzie, and Robert M. Gonyea reached two main conclusions. First, they determined that student engagement in “educationally purposeful activities” has a positive impact on grades and persistence from first to second year. 9 The second conclusion was that exposure to effective educational practices benefits all students, but especially lower-ability students and students of color. 10 In their study, Kimberly Martin, Richard Galentino, and Lori Townsend interviewed community college graduates as well as faculty and staff from the same institution. 11 They found that underpreparedness can be overcome by a motivated student and suggest researching the effect of the impact that successful students have on other students by asking, “could the characteristics of successful students rub off on others?” 12

There is a significant body of published library value studies in the literature and the number grows each year, especially given the attention Association of College & Research Libraries’ (ACRL) 2010 Value of Academic Libraries (VAL): A Comprehensive Research Review and Report 13 has received. Although the VAL agenda includes suggested study areas that are quantitative in nature, there is also a recommendation to study qualitative factors, such as student experience, attitude, and perception of quality. ACRL’s Academic Library Impact: Improving Practice and Essential Areas to Research supplied additional ideas on library value studies and included a study featuring semistructured interviews of provost views on the value of the libraries. 14

Although a handful of these research studies do contain some discussion of the affective components of library value, many of the studies that have been conducted focus more on quantifiable data, such as student retention and grade point average (GPA). 15 Researchers at the University of Minnesota have been prolific in publishing on their research of library value. 16 These value studies at Minnesota, the University of Wyoming, James Madison University, Murray State University, Curtin University, and Nevada State College consistently note convincing correlations between a variety of library services (instruction, research consultations, use of print or online resources, or workstation use) and student persistence, GPA, and academic engagement. Angie Thorpe, Ria Lukes, Diana J. Bever, and Yan He, the authors of a 2016 study on library use and student success, found there was an association between library services and higher GPAs and retention rates. 17 However, the authors had lingering questions around student motivators for using the library and effects of external factors on student success, and recommended added qualitative research strategies to help shed light on these areas of inquiry. 18 Several studies note that, although library use did have a correlation to higher GPA and retention rates, there is a need for more nuanced forms of measuring library usage to tell the complete story.

Some concerns exist regarding the increased pressure to demonstrate the value of the library to university administrations. In their recent meta-analysis, M. Brooke Robertshaw and Andrew Asher argue that many of these studies are statistically not convincing. They contend that findings of the studies, at their statistical face-value, support an argument that libraries are contributing very little to overall student success. 19 Beyond this, some in the profession point to the many other factors impacting student retention and GPA. Acknowledging that the privilege (zip code, income, race, and inheritance) of the student can be a key contributor to success, Zoe Fisher made a plea to find out what students really need from an academic library to be successful in college. 20 Fisher also raised the serious concern about student data privacy related to these types of studies.

As we developed our research study, we were conscious of the concerns raised by Robertshaw and Asher and Fisher. The quantitative piece of our study features a combination of both logistic and linear hierarchical regression, which is unusual in the library research literature. 21 Hierarchical regression is only referenced in four articles published in College & Research Libraries , none of which explored binary dependent variables. 22 Hierarchical regression is similar to other regression model building procedures in that the individual contributions of variables are estimated; its particular strength comes from the variables being added to the model at the discretion of the researcher, generally following a formal or informal theory, so that the researcher can estimate the distinct additional contribution of a group of purposefully selected variables as a unit. This technique is likely underused in the literature because researchers are unaware of the relative weakness of conclusions drawn from models developed using the stepwise selection method and its variants compared to those developed using theory to guide variable selection through hierarchical regression. Hierarchical regression also addresses the weakness of using an all-in model, which, because of intercorrelations between variables, cannot be used to estimate the unique contribution of a group of variables to the model. In addition to this quantitative analysis of student success, the student interviews gave us insight into the complex needs of our student population. We provide the steps taken to protect student privacy in both the quantitative and qualitative components of this study.

Using a multimethod approach allowed us to look at student success in the aggregate and better understand the impact of library resources and services to the student body at large, while the individual interviews gave us perspective on the role of the library at the individual level. Examining the results of two different types of data gave us a more holistic picture of what the library is doing well and where we need to improve.

Quantitative

The quantitative data included in this analysis are library use data and student demographic and academic data for all degree-seeking undergraduates enrolled at UNC in the fall 2017 semester. Use of institutional data in the application for the quantitative section of this study was considered exempt by our Institutional Review Board (IRB), and we also received approval from the Registrar, the Dean of University Libraries, and the Chief Information Officer to use the data. Four categories of library data were gathered: physical item checkout; use of library computers; instruction sessions attended; and research consultations. These categories represent library resources and services that are easily associated with patron information. Similar studies include the use of e-resources, but because of how the EZProxy server at UNC is supported, we were not able to gather information about off-campus access of e-resources. This created a gap in our analysis, but the analysis was sufficiently comprehensive to answer our questions without that data. To protect the privacy of our students, all raw data files as well as the anonymized SPSS reports are stored in the research group’s OneDrive folder, which is the campus’s secure storage location. In addition to the library data gathered, data from the campus data repository Banner was used. Only the institutional research member of the group has access to the Banner data.

The additional factors gathered for analysis were first-generation status (neither parent has earned a bachelor’s degree), gender, Pell grant eligibility, pre-fall GPA, underrepresented minority status, student classification, housing status (on- vs. off-campus), participation in a TRIO program (a federally funded group of programs that support students from underrepresented backgrounds in the pursuit of a college degree), and participation in UNIV 101, a college preparedness course. For students whose first term at UNC was fall 2017, and therefore had no institutional GPA for the analysis, we used the student’s high school GPA or the most recent transfer institution GPA for transfer students. We did not include major in the quantitative analysis for three reasons: 1) some majors have so few students that, if we included student’s major, the calculations would create unstable estimates; 2) the equation would suffer from lack of parsimony; and 3) students in lower enrollment majors would be identifiable, thus violating research ethics.

Initially, a demographic use analysis of library services was generated. While this offered insight into who used the library, it did not offer any correlative information. Using SPSS (v. 25), we ran hierarchical regression models using library resource and service use to explain persistence and spring 2018 cumulative GPA. In hierarchical regression, the researcher purposefully adds variables into a model in distinct steps to calculate the relative change in model fit with each additional variable. We entered all the control variables in step 1 for the analyses; in step 2, we added in the library use variables of interest to measure their unique contributions to the models. We found that gender, Pell grant eligibility, and UNIV101 participation variables provided no additional statistically significant explanatory power to either the persistence model or the spring 2018 cumulative GPA model, so we excluded them in the interest of parsimony. We used dummy coding for the categorical variables so that 1 indicated presence of the attribute and 0 indicated absence. For the student classification variable, we created three variables for the freshman through junior classifications, contrasting them with the senior classification. The outcome variables were whether the student persisted in the first model and their spring cumulative GPA in the second model.

Qualitative

For the qualitative component of our study, we conducted 17 face-to-face, semistructured interviews with current UNC undergraduate students. As mentioned above, the research team determined semistructured interviews would better allow us to understand students’ experiences with and perceptions of the library, which we felt we could not observe or obtain through other methods. 23 The interview questions centered on if, how, and why the students used the library (see appendix for the interview questions). We piloted the questions with three undergraduate student library employees to test for clarity and effectiveness. We made revisions based on the pilot. Because of the semistructured nature of the interviews, researchers were able to ask students follow-up questions to clarify or probe further into answers given. 24

To recruit participants for our study, researchers used multiple communications strategies. The office of Institutional Reporting and Analysis Services (IRAS) provided a list of email addresses for a randomly selected group of undergraduate students who were sent an email. We also made recruitment flyers that were hung in various academic and public buildings around campus, allowing students the opportunity to self-select into the study by contacting one of the researchers directly. Participants were offered a $10 gift card to thank them for their feedback.

The only criterion that students had to meet to participate was to be a current undergraduate student. All our interviewees were at least 18 years of age and signed a consent form before the interview began. The only demographic information gathered was their year in school and their area of study. We made the decision not to gather other demographic factors, such as race, gender, or Pell-grant eligibility to protect the privacy of the small sample size. Furthermore, because these demographic factors did not add any correlative significance to the quantitative findings, we felt that gathering this information from our interviewees was unnecessary. The interview participants represented a variety of majors and academic levels.

To analyze the 17 student interviews, we used a qualitative, inductive coding method to identify major themes. With student consent, we recorded audio of the interviews and used the program Temi to transcribe audio to text to assist with analysis. Two researchers took part in the analysis to ensure accuracy in our interpretations. We developed a thematic analysis process to capture the essence of the students’ answers to our interview questions that mapped to the overarching purpose of our study. 25 To ensure our data analysis was sensitive to our interviewees’ feelings and experiences, we used a combination of Descriptive and In Vivo coding techniques that incorporated students’ words and researcher-developed terms. 26 We then sorted each code into larger thematic groups.

Student Persistence, Grade Point Average, and Library Use

During fall 2017 and spring 2018, 76 percent of UNC degree-seeking undergraduate students who started school in fall 2017 used some library resource or service. A higher proportion of students of color used the library (80%) compared to those students who identified as white (75%). Library use was slightly higher for Pell grant–eligible students (79%) than for noneligible students (74%). Sophomores were the highest users by classification at 83 percent, and seniors were the lowest at 65 percent. The low usage of library resource and services among seniors may be an artifact of not including electronic resource activity in the analysis. 27 While the demographic use information was helpful in better understanding who was using the spaces, services, and resources available, those data did not answer our research questions about library use and its relationship to persistence. The logistic regression analysis showed all but the research consultation variables were statistically significant, and use of each library service or resource was associated with an increase in persistence. The relative odds of persisting differ little for the control variables across the models, except for participation in a TRIO program. TRIO program participation had the highest odds ratio across all models, varying from a 455 to a 590 percent higher odds * of persisting in the single library service or resource model and the number of library instruction sessions model, respectively. The likelihood of persisting increased in all three models with higher student classification or with higher academic standing as measured by pre-fall cumulative GPA. Importantly, after accounting for the contributions of these known predictors, all of the library use variables were associated with increased odds of persisting, although participating in a research consultation was not statistically significant. This lack of significance is likely due to so few students in the sample having used this service.

For the services that were statistically significant, checking out an item is associated with a 124 percent higher odds of persisting; logging in to a computer or participating in an instruction session are associated with 50 and 89 percent higher odds of persisting, respectively. The results of this model demonstrate that use of library resources and services increases the probability of a student persisting.

The second model investigated the impact of the number of distinct library resources and services used on persistence to address the relationship between the number of library services used and academic success. For each new library service or resource a student used, there was a 78 percent increase in the odds of the student persisting. Also, when considering the relative impact of multiple instruction sessions, the odds of persisting increases by 30 percent for each additional instruction session the student participated in.

*Here “chance” was replaced by “odds” and further down, “probability” was also replaced by “odds” as it was later determined that the original presentation of the findings exaggerated the strength of each mentioned relationship. See supplemental file for further explanation of this change.

The models explaining spring 2018 GPA show that, after accounting for the control variables, library resource and service use correlates with the minimal positive effect on end-of-year GPA. Our large quantitative sample has sufficient power to identify smaller, but still statistically significant, effect sizes that are important because they illustrate the contribution toward academic success of library use as a distinct behavior. Because libraries are integral to higher education, the statistical impacts of library use are likely subsumed by variables that entered the model as control variables. For example, some of the TRIO programs have a librarian assigned to work with the students in that program, so it is difficult to separate the impact of being in a TRIO program and the role the library plays. Previous academic achievement, as pre-fall 2017 cumulative GPA, explains the largest proportion of variance in spring 2018 cumulative GPA. However, checking out at least one item has similar effect in magnitude (β = .051), but in the opposite direction, as being a first-generation student (β = –.026) or identifying as an underrepresented minority (β = –.056). There is also evidence suggesting that some variables might violate the collinearity assumption of linear regression, which doesn’t affect the parameter estimates but does affect the confidence intervals for these estimates and tests of their statistical significance.

Student Perceptions of Success and the Libraries

With the modification of our original study to include qualitative data as well as quantitative, we determined that our working definitions of academic success also needed to evolve. Instead of relying on the common administrative definition of academic success (persistence and GPA), we used our interviews as an opportunity to ask students how they view academic success for themselves. The interviewees represented a variety of class levels and disciplines.

The majority of students we interviewed shared that, to them, success meant that they made their best possible effort . Dakota 28 articulated success this way:

making the most out of the academic experience, if you got something out of it. GPA sets you up well, but it’s not necessarily linked to success. Because I went here, this is why I think differently….People who have achieved academically start with knowledge and love for reading—this place (the library) is a metaphor for that.

About half of the interviewees shared that, to them, success meant they gained knowledge, or learned something new—regardless of their assigned grade . Successfully applying knowledge to real-life or postgraduate situations meant academic success to about half of the students interviewed. A few students mentioned developing a growth mindset , getting good grades, or being challenged as indicators of academic success.

From our interviews, we learned that students hold strong and varying opinions about the library. They overwhelmingly value the library as a distinct place on campus. Through qualitative analysis, we identified four major themes regarding the perceived role of the library in students’ academic achievement: space; people; place; and resources and services.

Space: Tasks Determine Destination in the Library

When asked what words come to mind when they think of the library, our interviewees almost exclusively used words that described the physical space of the library. Words like “books,” “study,” and “windows” were often cited. Therefore, when we discuss the theme of space, we are referring to the interior architecture and furnishings of the library buildings. While these students are aware of, and generally take advantage of, the library’s digital resources, for them, the library is a tangible destination. Reese claimed, “I found my place in the library, some people don’t want to come here, but for people who want to come here, it is open and easy for me to find my place in the library, my niche, easy to find my spot.” Multiple students mentioned they choose their location based on what they need to accomplish. For example, they venture to the quiet floor for individual work or reading, they use the study rooms for group work, and Sam commented on the beauty of the “big, long tables” available in Michener Library because they felt they could easily spread out with their laptop, notebook, and textbooks.

Many of our interviewees identified the variety of study room options available as a major advantage. Reese noted, “I usually come here for the study rooms upstairs to avoid distractions with living situation and roommate. My brain knows I am here to study and get things done.” Michener Library offers study rooms for one or two people and larger study rooms for groups. Students noted they were thankful for the ability to reserve these spaces, but a few wished that there were a few more study rooms that were available on a first-come, first-served basis. A couple of students voiced their desire for more study rooms in general. Study rooms, as distinct spaces within the larger library environment, were clearly viewed as an asset for our students.

The furniture of the library was also a common topic in our interviews. Whether they loved or hated a specific style of furniture, students overwhelmingly appreciated the variety of seating and table options provided by the library. When asked specifically about how they choose where they situate themselves, Sasha said “it really depends on what I’m doing. If it’s something I can do strictly on my laptop, I’ll be in one of the comfier chairs. If it’s something that I’m doing like transferring notes, I’ll be at a harder chair with a desk.”

Finally, many of our interviewees commented on the architectural features of the predominantly concrete, Brutalist building. While a few mentioned that it felt “dated,” most loved the openness and light imparted by the design. The rectilinear layout of the building creates a series of alternating nooks framed by large windows. 29 Multiple students named these bright, semiprivate spaces as their go-to destinations within the library.

People: Sometimes a Distraction, but Can Offer Help and Comfort

For the theme of people, students referred to both library faculty and staff, as well as other library users. A significant number of our interviewees used the word “helpful” to describe the library. While this could refer to multiple services and resources, “helpful people” was a common refrain. Our interviewees were largely aware of the presence of subject-specific librarians and support staff in the library. A couple of students talked about taking a library course, having a librarian come into one of their classes, or meeting with their liaison librarian for an assignment. Alex classified one of the library’s roles as “people assigned to each department—one person dedicated to my discipline, or someone who can help me find things or use the scanner.” That sentiment was echoed by Chris, who said library staff are “here to help and understand you are there….I never had a bad experience with staff.” Jordan shared the opinion that, “I feel I should utilize the librarians more, like when I am having trouble with a research paper. I don’t, but I should utilize them.” Others discussed interacting with library staff at the information desk or student employees at various service points. While a few of the students mentioned they preferred to be “self-sufficient,” they knew the library was full of people willing to help.

Beyond faculty and staff employed in the library, many of our interviewees discussed people in the library in a broader context. A number of the students we spoke with described the library as a “social environment.” Nearly every student we spoke with discussed noise in the library at some point during the interview. This is perhaps not surprising, given the common stereotype of libraries being quiet places. Students were overwhelmingly positive about the separation of noise zones, by floors, in Michener Library. While multiple students felt that noise enforcement could be more robust on the quiet floor, they generally liked that there is an entire floor dedicated to quiet study. Cameron described enjoying “the sense of camaraderie—even if you don’t know the other students.” Wanting to see the library build on their existing role as a place of community, Morgan said, “other than use it for studying, resources, it could be a great place to bring together academic community events…like club meetings.” Whether the students saw it as positive or negative, the presence of people is an indisputable characteristic of the academic library.

Place: The Library Is a Place People Know and Want to Be

Overwhelmingly, our students discussed the library as a place—a place to focus, to study, to meet friends, to get away, to get things done. Place as a theme refers to the idea of the library as a destination, as a commonly known entity that supports a larger community. A place is a space that has value-added meaning and is a location enhanced by human experiences. Many of our interviewees noted the library had a good location on campus—everybody knows where it is. This centrality lends itself to students being able to convene group study sessions, concentrate on a homework assignment, meet with their club members, grab a cup of coffee, or simply take a break between classes. Perhaps being able to support such a variety of activities is one of the reasons why many of our students described the library as welcoming or a “safe space.”

As mentioned earlier, many of the students we interviewed tended to find comfort in knowing there were other people at the library, many with the same goals. They described the library as a type of community. Richard Wilkie and George F. Roberson describe attachment to place as “subjective human attraction to, and bonding with, places that are considered to hold special meanings and even sacred qualities for that person.” 30 Dakota stated, “I feel like the library is like the heart of academia.” They went on to say, “We are all here to better ourselves for our future, I like that about the library environment. At a coffee shop you have no idea who they are. At the library you are most likely doing something academic.”

Students also discussed specific services or offerings supported by the library that contribute to the academic community. Athletic study halls, tutoring services, the art gallery, the coffee corner, and late-night study hours were all cited by students as reasons to be in the library. While students expressed varying degrees of approval for these initiatives, the overall impression was that it was important for the library to continue its support of these services.

Resources and Services: The Library Has What You Need to Get Things Done

For this theme, we are referring to the physical and electronic offerings of the library. Our interviewees named many resources, from movable whiteboards, computers, and outlets to books, archival materials, and specific databases as integral to their library use routines. The accessibility of these resources was also noted by many of the students. While a few students noted the need for an increase in food options, whiteboards, or additions to our collection (databases specific to business students), most of our interviewees were satisfied with the number and variety of our resources. There were disciplinary differences apparent in responses, for example, as science-related major Reese shared: “I feel out of place here [with the print resources]. I go to the website a lot and that is usually how I find my info on English papers.” Riley, a world languages major, however, felt that “everyone knows where it is, you have everything you need, so if you have a group project you go, hey, let’s just meet at Michener Library and use the computers.” A few of the interviewees discussed not understanding or being confused by the organization of the library and suggested that additional signage would help with wayfinding and location of materials.

Technology was frequently cited by the students as a beneficial library offering. Most notably, students appreciated the technology they personally did not possess, such as dual-monitor computers, expensive software packages, or recording equipment. Services such as printing and wi-fi were also mentioned. The concept that the library helped students save money was discussed specifically by a few of our interviewees. They cited the availability of video-editing software on our public computers and our extensive collection of sheet music as particularly beneficial.

Implications of Findings

The strength of this study is that it explores the role the library plays in student success at two levels. At the institutional level, we conclude University Libraries at UNC does have a positive correlation with improved student success. The quantitative data shows a clear connection between library use and an increase in the probability of persisting to the next year, suggesting the community building impact of the libraries. The link to an improved GPA is minimal, but considering that many of the students interviewed are more concerned with building knowledge and developing a growth mindset, we are not disappointed or discouraged by the GPA results. The qualitative data, which allows us to examine the role the library plays at an individual level, demonstrates the library’s role as an academic community center and the critical importance of the library as an academic place.

Others have written opinion pieces and conducted research studies on the library as place and have testified to the importance of the physical space of the library to students. 31 Many of our student interviewees indicated they appreciated the library building and how important it is to them in terms of space and place. Sasha discussed their fondness for their library by stating, “I really like coming here because it’s an area specifically for focus, so I don’t have the same distractions as I do at home and just the overall feel makes me stay more productive.” Much of what our interviewees shared mirrors the notion articulated by Karen A. Neurohr and Lucy E. Bailey in their study of first-generation students and library spaces. They observed, “both libraries and the mini-spaces they encompass can become places of attachment through their instrumental functions and more effable qualities tied to knowledge, history, community and pride.” 32 When asked to share words that describe the library, Dakota exclaimed, “it’s a little dated, but I kinda love it. Like, the history behind it all—my parents would have been in a library like this.” Our findings parallel some of the literature related to academic library architecture. Geoffrey Freeman shared the idea of the library as “extension of the classroom,” where students “access and explore with fellow students information in a variety of formats, analyze the information in group discussion, and produce a publication or a presentation for the next day’s seminar.” 33 The qualitative themes we discovered from our students indicate that the roles of the library as community builder and one that expedites their work are important, dovetailing with Freeman’s vision of the library as “centerpiece for establishing the intellectual community and scholarly enterprise.” 34

Within the four themes we identified, students shared in their words how the library contributes to their academic success. For many of them, it provides an important physical environment to enable them to achieve their fullest potential in academic ability. These interviewee reflections show that students feel a sense of belonging with other student scholars when they are using the library. Several interviewees mentioned that coming to the library helps them focus and accomplish their work, away from distractions in their living space and offers a many-faceted place of interaction. The library offers resources and technological access that many students could not otherwise afford. These comments demonstrate how the library’s space, people, place, and resources and services contribute to their academic ability, wellness, sense of belonging, and financial capability—all areas that are critical “pillars” described in our university’s SESS plan for students to persist in their academic careers.

While it is important to the library to be able to demonstrate a link between library use and student success, the results also confirmed there are areas for improvement, as described in the looking to the future section. The initial findings for research consultations, while not statistically significant, did indicate a positive probability for persisting. To better understand the relationship between research consultations and persistence, library’s personnel should be encouraged to promote research consultations so we can further explore if and how this service related to persistence and GPA. In fact, outreach to all members of the UNC community should mention the positive relationship between library use and persistence, and library’s personnel should be encouraging more library use. The results should also be shared with upper-level administrators to remind them of the impact of the library on academic success. This study should serve as a reminder of the importance of including the library in campuswide discussions, particularly in initiatives like the SESS plan previously discussed. We believe that, by highlighting the student voice in these discussions, our findings are not just decontextualized statistics but more nuanced depictions of students’ experiences with the library and its role in their overall success. 35

Finally, the results of this study stand as further proof that libraries cater to a large community of learners with diverse needs. While academic achievement and persistence are important, students see the library as a “safe space,” a place to meet up with friends, a place to learn, a place to relax, and a place to create. It is imperative that library personnel respond with programming, services, and resources that are responsive to the needs of the whole student.

Study Limitations

Our study has a few notable limitations. One is that, in our quantitative data, we did not gather any statistics on digital library use. As we know from our institutional IPEDS/ACRL data, digital resources make up a significant portion of our total resource use, so not having this data means we do not have a complete picture of how library use relates to persistence. Second, we encountered some technical difficulties implementing a card-swipe system to gather the specific students who attended instruction sessions; instead, we used the class roster for all the undergraduate classes that scheduled information literacy instruction sessions; some students on the roster may not have attended the session. There are also students who use the library for study space only or may use services, like asking a question at the circulation desk, where we do not gather patron data. Once again, the lack of data does not invalidate the results from our analyses, but it does mean the picture we have is not as robust and nuanced as it could be. Another limitation is that the quantitative findings only include one year of data. Further study is needed to determine if this is a long-term trend.

The limitations of the qualitative analysis include the probability of self-selection bias as well as the effect of having librarians conduct the interviews. By identifying as librarians, the interviewers may have unintentionally influenced the interviewees to provide positive feedback about the library. Finally, like many library value studies, we are unable to account for all potential variables regarding the persistence of students—services like tutoring, counseling, participation in university activities, and the students’ noncognitive attributes like motivation that potentially have important positive or synergistic influences on why students persist. The statistical procedure we chose, hierarchical regression, does afford researchers an improved ability to parcel out variance explained and attribute it to a particular set of variables, but it, like all regression procedures, is limited to analyzing the data available and so cannot escape this limitation of the variable set.

We set out to answer several research questions with this multimethod study. Our quantitative analysis revealed that checking out library material or using a library computer or attending an information literacy instruction session are all associated with an increase in persistence. Participating in a research consultation was not statistically significant to student persistence, but it did indicate a positive probability for persisting—this finding is likely due to a small sample size. For each additional library service used, there was a higher probability for student persistence. Multiple information literacy instruction sessions also increased the probability for persistence. Our findings indicate that using at least one of these library services has minimal effect on end-of-year grade point average. We determined that we needed an additional approach to gathering data to better understand our findings, so we developed the qualitative piece of the study to include a different methodology. Our qualitative results indicated that students define success as putting forth their best effort, acquiring new knowledge, and being able to apply their new knowledge to real-life situations after graduating, regardless of their GPA or grade they receive in a class. Our qualitative research revealed four themes from the students in terms of how the libraries help them succeed: space, people, place, and resources and services.

There is a bridge between our quantitative and qualitative research findings. Our study objectively focused on students coming to the physical library to conduct activities such as using a computer, checking out physical material, attending an information literacy instruction session, or accessing a research consultation. Most of those activities influenced their persistence. Subjectively, students shared how important it was to be around peers and having a place to focus with other amenities like online resources, library employees, and a variety of spaces to meet their academic goals. The student interviewees talked about being around and interacting with other students, echoing a phrase from our literature review, a place for “educationally purposeful activities.” To put it another way, our findings indicate that the libraries contribute to student success in terms of helping students progress in their knowledge and persist as university students.

The final research question we explored was what role do libraries play in student success? Our findings point to the conclusion that the library fills a unique role for students and provides a trusted network of people, spaces, and resources that help set the stage for students to succeed in terms of persistence and providing a sense of community. The role of the libraries may be that of facilitators of a scholarly community. Ultimately, the benefit of conducting a multi-method study is that our findings provide a more holistic view of library value. Our quantitative analysis gave us the macro-perspective. Based on our analyses, we can draw conclusions about our students and their needs in the aggregate. Our qualitative findings provided us with the micro-perspective by hearing from students directly, and these results provided us with actionable items to help improve the undergraduate student experience with the library.

Looking to the Future

We anticipate the findings of this study will have significant impacts on decision making in the university libraries in terms of how we can increasingly contribute to our students’ articulated sense of belonging when they use the library, which in turn impacts their academic success in the form of persistence. This research will have the potential to inform future steps to improve student academic success in terms of our programming, pedagogical decisions, material and equipment purchases, outreach and marketing priorities, and project planning. After all, improving services for students to help them succeed was the main driver of this study. However, we acknowledge it is important to share our findings with a variety of stakeholders. We will develop a strategy to communicate our findings to a variety of audiences. We will share what we learned with the UNC Libraries liaisons and staff, the UNC Strategic Enrollment and Student Success Implementation Team Leads, the Provost, and, perhaps most important, the student body. The libraries intend to continue our involvement in SESS plan as we determine the concrete next steps on our campus.

While we can speculate about the potential implications of our study, one specific project we plan to move forward is the writing of a privacy statement that is specific to library use. We plan to build on the privacy policies developed by our institution 36 by addressing the unique instances of information use and data gathering in an academic library environment that clearly outline potential privacy risks to our students (also a common critique of library value studies). There is the potential to develop this project into a longitudinal study.

Our study provides an addition to the library literature by providing a new way to explore library impact on student success by combining quantitative methods with the activation of the student voice in our interviews. Our study helped confirm that, while there is room for improvement of our services, our library services are indeed impactful to students. Our profession needs to have continued conversations regarding reframing value of library studies. Barbara Fister wrote about the idea of “the value of our values.” 37 We should continue to reassert our values—rather than feel that we need to prove our value—which in turn builds on our strengths to provide for our community of students, as well as clarify our role in higher education.

Appendix. Student Interview Questions

• What is your year in school and your major?
• When you think of the library, what words come to mind?
• What motivates you to do well in school?
• If yes, which ones? How often? Why do you use those resources or spaces?
• If no, why not?
• How do you define academic success? What does it mean to you?
• What role does (or can) the library play in your academic career?
• What could the libraries do more of or differently to improve your success? (Follow-up: What types of events, trainings, furniture, and so on would you like?)
• Picture yourself doing homework or a research project. Where are you, what are you doing? (Follow-up: Does the library factor into your process? If so, how?)
• What do you think of the library environment?
• What if the library…? (fill in the blank)
• Any other comments?

1. George D. Kuh et al., What Matters to Student Success: A Review of the Literature (Commissioned Report for the National Symposium on Postsecondary Student Success: Spearheading a Dialog on Student Success, July 2006), 7, available online at https://nces.ed.gov/npec/pdf/kuh_team_report.pdf [accessed 10 October 2019].

2. Travis T. York, Charles Gibson, and Susan Rankin, “Defining and Measuring Academic Success,” Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation 20, no. 5 (Mar. 2015): 1.

3. This definition was developed by reviewing the relevant literature and considering the character of our institution and student body. Ultimately we used the following documents: Kuh et al., What Matters to Student Success , 7; York, Gibson, and Rankin, “Defining and Measuring Academic Success,” 5; and Huron Consulting Group, Strategic Enrollment and Student Success Plan (SESS): Path to Implementation (Greeley, CO: University of Northern Colorado, 2018), 17, available online at https://www.unco.edu/president/pdf/task-force/student-enrollment-plan/strategic-enrollment-plan.pdf [accessed 17 December 2018].

4. University of Northern Colorado, 2019 Spring Final Enrollment Profile (Greeley, CO, 2019), available online at https://www.unco.edu/institutional-reporting-analysis-services/pdf/enrollment-stats/Spring2019FinalEnrollmentReport.pdf [accessed 29 August 2019].

5. Huron Consulting Group, Strategic Enrollment and Student Success Plan , 18.

6. Huron Consulting Group, Strategic Enrollment and Student Success Plan , 17.

7. Huron Consulting Group , Strategic Enrollment and Student Success Plan , 23.

8. Vincent Tinto, “Tinto’s South African Lectures,” Journal of Student Affairs in Africa 2, no. 2 (2014): 5–28, https://www.journals.ac.za/index.php/jsaa/article/view/1251/473 .

9. George D. Kuh et al., “Unmasking the Effects of Student Engagement on First-Year College Grades and Persistence,” Journal of Higher Education 79, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 2008): 555.

10. Kuh et al., “Unmasking the Effects of Student Engagement on First-Year College Grades and Persistence,” 555.

11. Kimberly Martin, Richard Galentino, and Lori Townsend, “Community College Student Success: The Role of Motivation and Self-Empowerment,” Community College Review 42 no. 3 (2014): 221–41.

12. Martin, Galentino, and Townsend, “Community College Student Success,” 238.

13. Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL), The Value of Academic Libraries: A Comprehensive Research Review and Report, researched by Megan Oakleaf (Chicago, IL: ACRL, Sept. 2010), available online at www.ala.org/acrl/sites/ala.org.acrl/files/content/issues/value/val_report.pdf

14. Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL), Academic Library Impact: Improving Practice and Essential Areas to Research , prepared by Lynn Silipigni Connaway, William Harvey, Vanessa Kitzie, and Stephanie Mikitish of OCLC Research (Chicago, IL: ACRL, 2017), available online at www.ala.org/acrl/sites/ala.org.acrl/files/content/publications/whitepapers/academiclib.pdf [accessed 17 December 2018].

15. A few notable library value studies include the following: Melissa Bowles-Terry, “Library Instruction and Academic Success: A Mixed Methods Assessment of a Library Instruction Program,” Evidence Based Library and Information Practice 7, no. 1 (2012): 82–95; Gaby Haddow, “Academic Library Use and Student Retention: A Quantitative Analysis,” Library & Information Science Research 35 (2013): 127–36; Krista M. Soria, Jan Fransen, and Shane Nackerud, “Stacks, Serials, Search Engines, and Students’ Success: First-Year Undergraduate Students’ Library Use, Academic Achievement, and Retention,” Journal of Academic Librarianship 40 (2014): 84–91; Adam Murray, Ashley Ireland, and Jana Hackathorn, “The Value of Academic Libraries: Library Services as a Predictor of Student Retention,” College & Research Libraries 77, no. 5 (Sept. 2016): 631–42; Krista M. Soria, Jan Fransen, and Shane Nackerud, “Beyond Books: The Extended Academic Benefits of Library Use for First-Year College Students,” College & Research Libraries 78, no. 1 (Jan. 2017): 8–21; and Tiffany LeMaistre, Quingmin Shi, and Sandip Thanki, “Connecting Library Use to Student Success,” portal: Libraries and the Academy 18, no. 1 (Jan. 2018): 117–40.

16. For an introduction to the work of the researchers at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities have conducted, see Krista M. Soria, Jan Fransen, and Shane Nakerud, “Library Use and Undergraduate Student Outcomes: New Evidence for Students’ Retention and Academic Success,” portal: Libraries and the Academy 13, no. 2 (2013): 147–64.

17. Angie Thorpe et al., “The Impact of the Academic Library on Student Success: Connecting the Dots,” portal: Libraries and the Academy 16, no. 2 (2016): 373–92.

18. Thorpe et al., “The Impact of the Academic Library on Student Success,” 387.

19. M. Brooke Robertshaw and Andrew Asher, “Unethical Numbers? A Meta-Analysis of Library Learning Analytics Studies” (pre-print manuscript, Feb. 25, 2019), available online at https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/articles/bc386q51c [accessed 28 June 2019].

20. Zoe Fisher, “Who Succeeds in Higher Education? Questioning the Connection Between Academic Libraries and Student Success” (plenary presentation, California Academic & Research Libraries conference, Redwood City, CA, Apr. 15, 2018), available online at https://quickaskzoe.com/2018/04/15/who-succeeds-in-higher-education/ [accessed 28 June 2019].

21. An example of a study using logistic regression is Adam Murray, Ashley Ireland, and Jana Hackathorn, “The Value of Academic Libraries: Library Services as a Predictor of Student Retention,” College & Research Libraries 77, no. 5 (Sept. 2016): 631–42. An example of a study using hierarchical regression is Ethelene Whitmire, “Development of Critical Thinking Skills: An Analysis of Academic Library Experiences and Other Measures,” College & Research Libraries 59, no. 3 (May 1998): 266–73.

22. Following are some College & Research Libraries articles that feature hierarchical regression but not binary dependent variables: Samantha Godbey, “Testing Future Teachers: A Quantitative Exploration of Factors Impacting the Information Literacy of Teacher Education Students” (July 2018), available online at https://crl.acrl.org/index.php/crl/article/view/16764/18302 [accessed 10 October 2019]; Jennifer Fabbi, “Fortifying the Pipeline: Quantitative Exploration of High School Factors Impacting the Information Literacy of First-Year College Students” (Jan. 2015), available online at https://crl.acrl.org/index.php/crl/article/view/16400/17846 [accessed 10 October 2019]; Joyce S. Phillips, Kerry D. Carson, and Paula P. Carson, “Evolution of Affective Career Outcomes: A Field Study of Academic Librarians (Nov. 1994), available online at https://crl.acrl.org/index.php/crl/article/view/14930/16376 [accessed 10 October 2019]; and Ethelene Whitmire, “Development of Critical Thinking Skills: An Analysis of Academic Library Experiences and Other Measures” (May 1998), available online at https://crl.acrl.org/index.php/crl/article/view/15209/16655 [accessed 10 October 2019].

23. Sharan B. Merriam and Elizabeth J. Tisdell, “Conducting Effective Interviews,” in Qualitative Research: A Guide to Design and Implementation (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2015), 108.

24. Janice M. Morse, “The Implications of Interview Type and Structure in Mixed-Methods Design,” in The Sage Handbook of Interview Research: The Complexity of the Craft , eds. Jaber F. Gubrium, James A. Holstein, Amir B. Marvasti, and Karyn D. McKinney (Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications, 2012), 197.

25. Sharan B. Merriam and Elizabeth J. Tisdell, “Qualitative Data Analysis,” in Qualitative Research: A Guide to Design and Implementation (San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass, 2015), 195–236.

26. Johnny Saldaña, “First Cycle Coding Methods,” in The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers (Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publishing, 2009), 45–148.

27. Maximiliano Montenegro et al., “Library Resources and Students’ Learning Outcomes: Do All the Resources Have the Same Impact on Learning?” Journal of Academic Librarianship 45, no. 5 (Sept. 2016): 551–56.

28. All student names provided in this article are pseudonyms.

29. See figures 1 and 2 for images of the James A. Michener Library level 3 floor plan, and the library exterior, for context.

30. Richard Wilkie and George F. Roberson, “Attachment to Place,” in 21st Century Geography: A Reference

Handbook , ed. Joseph P. Stoltman (Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publishing, 2012), 135–48.

31. A few of the studies include: Michael J. Khoo et al., “‘A Really Nice Spot’: Evaluating Place, Space, and Technology in Academic Libraries,” College & Research Libraries 77, no. 1 (Jan. 2016): 51–70; Seung Hyan Cha and Tae Wan Kim, “What Matters for Students’ Use of Physical Space?” Journal of Academic Librarianship 41 (2015): 274–79; and Karen A. Neurohr and Lucy E. Bailey, “First-Generation Undergraduate Students and Library Spaces: A Case Study,” in Assessing Library Space for Learning , ed. Susan E. Montgomery (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017).

32. Neurohr and Bailey, “First-Generation Undergraduate Students and Library Spaces,” 169.

33. Geoffrey T. Freeman, The Library as Place: Changes in Learning Patterns, Collections, Technology, and Use , Report 5 (Arlington, VA: Council on Library and Information Resources, Feb. 2005), available online at https://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub129/freeman/ [accessed 28 June 2019].

34. Freeman, The Library as Place , 3.

35. Jennifer Mayer and Rachel Dineen, “Debating Student Privacy in Library Research Projects,” in ACRL 2019 Proceedings (Chicago, IL: ACRL, 2019): 183–89, available online at www.ala.org/acrl/sites/ala.org.acrl/files/content/conferences/confsandpreconfs/2019/DebatingStudentPrivacyinLibraryResearchProjects.pdf [accessed 28 June 2019].

36. University Regulations (University of Northern Colorado, Greeley, CO, Sept. 5, 2018, 3-9-206), 27, 97–98, available online at https://www.unco.edu/trustees/pdf/University_Regulations.pdf [accessed 28 June 2019].

37. Barbara Fister, “Introduction: The Value of Our Values” (Essays Commissioned for ACRL’s 75th Anniversary, Chicago, IL: Association of College & Research Libraries, 2019), available online at https://acrl.ala.org/newroles/?page_id=269 [accessed 8 November 2019].

* Jennifer Mayer is Associate Professor, Head of Library Research Services; Rachel Dineen is Assistant Professor, Information Literacy and Undergraduate Support; Angela Rockwell is Data Analyst & Report Writer; and Jayne Blodgett is Assistant Dean of Libraries, all at University of Northern Colorado; email: [email protected] , [email protected] , [email protected] , [email protected] . The authors thank Lyda McCartin, a former University Libraries colleague, for her contributions as project originator and member of the original research team. We also thank our reviewers, Michelle Demeter and Tony Stamatoplos, both of whom provided invaluable feedback on our manuscript during the open review and revision process for this special issue of College & Research Libraries . ©2020 Jennifer Mayer, Rachel Dineen, Angela Rockwell, and Jayne Blodgett, Attribution-NonCommercial ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ ) CC BY-NC.

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Future-Ready Libraries

How libraries can be a campus catalyst to prepare students for what's next..

Rethinking Libraries

Discover how the role of the library is evolving to advance changes in technology, pedagogy and learning.

Do e-books, digital information and active learning mean that campus libraries will inevitably become a thing of the past? Absolutely not. Books on shelves may be becoming more dormant, but progressive schools everywhere are discovering ways to transform their libraries into dynamic flexible learning spaces for diverse ways of learning and knowledge creation.

Traditionally, libraries were very rigid places where people could go to look up information that they didn’t have access to elsewhere. “There were lots of rules. Don’t talk. Move that book to that table only. Definitely don’t have any food in here. Don’t move the furniture,” recalls Jim Brockman, a high school assistant principal in St. Louis, Mo. But now, he says, “It’s tools. It’s opportunities. It’s collaboration spaces. It’s meeting experts in fields and being able to pick the brain of those people and to pursue their passions. That’s the library of today.”

In fact, on some campuses, the role of the library has changed so dramatically that the building now bears a new name: the learning commons.

Steelcase Education has closely studied this rapid evolution of libraries: visiting campuses, interviewing, observing and listening. Learnings from educators, librarians and administrators, uncovered new insights into ways the library can be reinvented for what’s now, and what’s next.

Libraries are a catalyst for evolution on campus.

Often the largest learning environment on campus, the library is a place where students can feel inspired and supported. It’s also a place to build skills that may not be taught in classrooms – across-the-disciplines investigations, hands-on creative explorations of ideas or gaining new technology skills, for example. In fact, today’s libraries are as likely to have a café, a maker space and a digital scholarship center as they are to contain reading rooms, study carrels and seemingly endless stacks of books.

Expanding on their legacy role as an academic hub that’s the heart of the campus, today’s libraries are rapidly morphing into multipurpose places of connection where students, faculty, library staff and even members of the community can work and interact freely, developing the cognitive, social and emotional competencies that are essential for meaningful impact in today’s world.

“Libraries of the future are innovative and collaborative and inspirational….They’re places for community and academic support as well as social spaces.” Ann Roll I Associate Dean of collections and Scholarly Communications California State University, Fullerton

Libraries are interdisciplinary, inclusive and inspiring.

Most people go to the library for the same reason: to learn something they don’t already know. As several librarians described to us, libraries are places where journeys of discovery begin. For that reason, a library should be a nonthreatening place that feels like it belongs to each person who uses it, whether you’re a tenured Ph.D. faculty member or a first-generation college student — a place where everyone is a learner and even students can be teachers.

“We really transformed our service model to encourage student experts to train their peers and I’ve seen that succeed in a variety of ways,” says Alison Benadetti, a library director at UCLA. Student-to-student writing consultation services, student library assistants and student aides for freshmen in a special program are all available here.

Libraries are at the intersection of scholarly, social and emotional needs.

Today’s libraries are increasingly a gathering spot where students can develop across multiple dimensions, not just gain what can be learned from books.

“We need to think about the library as not just a place to provide help and support, but also as a second home, a space that feels welcoming and not intimidating,” says Carlos Rodriguez, dean of the university library at Cal-State in Los Angeles. “Ideally, the space can adapt and be the container for the expertise, the interactions and the services – a place where students can discover not just new information and new knowledge, but also really discover themselves and how they can contribute to society.”

Libraries are adaptable, scholarly spaces that support the rhythm and range of learning.

Learning isn’t just a single mode. It’s a changing rhythm of focus and interaction, collaborating and socializing, rest and rejuvenation. It’s working with technologies as well as books, whiteboards and sticky notes. It’s people finding out how and where they work best, depending on their task and mood. The library plays a huge role in making all that happen when it offers choices that support the different rhythms of scholarship and the differing needs of people.

“We need to have the space, the seating, the tools, the technology, and we need the ability to use it all in a coordinated way,” says Chris Carter, director of organizational effectiveness for the libraries at the University of Texas at Austin. “Throughout the day, the space will change from one use to another. We need it to be seamless. We need it to be self-service. And we need the space itself to support all the different types of functions.”

Connect + Collaborate: Create spaces that support formal and informal learning that allow for creativity and sharing.

Focus + Be Productive: Create spaces to concentrate and focus while considering comfort, security and wellbeing.

A New Spatial Paradigm

Libraries used to be defined by what was in them – i.e., the books on the shelves. More and more, they’re being defined by what happens in them. Rather than a singular focus of, “I go, I read, I leave,” educators are looking for ways to create libraries that have a more dynamic purpose.

Accomplishing all that requires more than a mindset shift; it also requires embracing a shift in design principles in order to create formal, informal and social learning spaces that support expanded services and technologies plus a wide range of user behaviors, preferences and activities. For most libraries, the biggest challenge involves designing for connection and collaboration, while still fully supporting individual discovery. This requires very carefully planning adjacencies and the relationships between people, tools, furniture and the overall space. Access to power and necessary technologies everywhere has become essential, as well as easy-to-spot areas where help is available, whether from peers, faculty or library staff.

Different types of seating and tables should comfortably support postures appropriate to the task – whether that’s sitting up straight, perching, lounging or standing. Additionally, providing different levels and types of privacy – visual, acoustical and territorial — helps people be more productive and feel at ease. And easy-to-move furniture, whiteboards, privacy screens and dividers encourage adapting spaces to fit the needs of the moment, while also ensuring future flexibility for the library as a whole.

No question, libraries are changing. Rather than staying stuck in the past, leading educators are stepping up to the challenge: thinking through opportunities, changing course and leveraging the power of space to support new ways of discovery and learning.

Interested in learning more?

Check out our podcast “ Rethinking the Heart of Campus .”

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Developing strong partnerships with academics – Trinity College Library, Dublin

What is TCD’s institutional context?

Trinity College Dublin (TCD) was created by royal charter in 1592 and modelled on the Oxbridge system. It is home to 18,000 students across all the major disciplines in the Arts and Humanities, Business, Law, Engineering, Science, and Health Sciences. It is ranked 155 th in the world according to THE . The College’s Strategy to 2025 positions research ‘at the heart of the university’ with an emphasis on transformative, investigator-led work that is fully sustainable.

The Old Library Redevelopment Project will conserve and safeguard the Old Library and its world-class collections. Image supplied courtesy of Digital Collections, the Library of Trinity College. Copyright the Board of Trinity College.

TCD has the first capital campaign of a university in Ireland underway. The Library is one of three flagship projects, not just for the Old Library Redevelopment , but also for the ambitious digitisation initiative that is the Virtual Trinity Library . The vision is for their unique and distinct collections to be made accessible around the world, as well as conserving and researching the collections. Every category (there are nine) has an academic lead. The new President/Provost is one of them; the previous Vice-Provost and Seamus Heaney Professor of English is another.

What is the ‘collaborative context’ for TCD?

As part of its shift toward digital, TCD Library was in collaboration with the University’s Drama department and a major Computer Science group (led by a previous research scientist of Disney Research) that resulted in a virtual reality rendition of the Long Room featuring a volumetric video of Jonathan Swift (played by actor Jonathan White). The scenery was built using a combination of manual modeling and photogrammetry and involved audience/ux research of AR and VR.

The Library has significant partnerships with academics at TCD, including areas such as Computer Science and Education and specific College research groups such as TILDA, The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing . TCD’s Librarian, Helen Shenton, is co-chair of an ad-hoc task force on Open Scholarship with the Dean of Research (now the Provost/President-elect).

The one-year programme, called ‘Unboxing Open Scholarship’ , focuses on Open Scholarship and Citizen Science, with c .1,000 people participating in the different events. Its key question relates to TCD’s appetite – does the organisation want to be a leader or a follower, or something in between? At the time of the research, the National Open Research Forum (NORF) was also just starting. Open Scholarship is an area where the Library is a key partner, also through LERU (League of European Research Universities) and the LERU ‘Roadmap to Open Science’ . In a joint initiative between the Dean of Research and the Library, the College has joined the Irish ORCID.[ 2 ] An aspirational flagship project detailed in the new research strategy is the proposed Trinity Citizen Scholarship Platform, which will inspire the public to engage in TCD research. The Library will take a leading role in making unique content available on this platform.

A new Research Collections Study Centre will provide national and international scholars with a secure and accessible environment to intimately study the unique and distinct collections. Located in the beautifully colonnaded ground floor, the Study Centre will overlook Library Square, one of the original historic courtyards at Trinity College. It will be a visible testament to the University’s commitment to research, innovation, and widening access to its collections. Image supplied courtesy of Heneghan Peng Architects. Copyright the Board of Trinity College.

The Library was heavily involved in setting up the Trinity Long Room Hub , one of TCD’s five flagship research institutes, dedicated to promoting and facilitating excellence across the Arts and Humanities community in the College. International collaboration between TCD Library and libraries in other countries is also to the fore, as for example with the Royal Library of the Netherlands (KB) and the Fagel Collection , one of the key initiatives in the Virtual Trinity Library.

What skills and staffing are required for effective research?

The above examples describe close partnership working within the institution between the Library and the academic community, as characterised by the close relationship between the Librarian and the Dean of Research. The Librarian is also on the College’s Research Committee , the place where all the Directors of Research meet and work. The Library was involved in the development of the new Research Strategy [ 3 , 4 ].

There are also ‘embedded librarians’ (as is the case at Harvard), where librarians are part of the research teams, especially in Health Sciences. This approach works well across a range of disciplines, from medical sciences to arts and humanities subjects.

What is the future of research at TCD?

TCD Library’s strength lies in collaborative or translational research. In the future, there may be a need to redefine activities such as cataloguing in order to ensure that resources can be obtained to carry out necessary new work. Several library staff members have doctorates, and work in partnership with academics to develop new undergraduate and postgraduate courses, for example, the new cross-disciplinary MPhil in Medieval Studies draws on the Library’s collections and is an early candidate for research and digitisation under the Virtual Trinity Library. Research into enhanced technology, such as Transkribus (AI transcriptions) and IIIF, also flows from these projects, in partnership with faculty. The Subject Librarian team deliver a plethora of instruction on, for example, research methodologies.

Global Culture: Papyrus and Objects . Because Trinity scholars have always been deeply involved in European research initiatives, much original research material has been acquired by the Library from far-distant European and Asian lands reflecting global culture through the ages. Image supplied courtesy of Digital Collections, the Library of Trinity College. Copyright the Board of Trinity College.

The radically new Library Strategy 2015-2020 is, in effect, a new fifteen-year strategy, which was created in conjunction with the academic community. The completion of the Strategy was preceded by a year of public debate, including a final symposium with experts such as Stanford University’s Librarian Mike Keller and Chief Executive of the British Library Roly Keating. [20] The Strategy’s starting point was that TCD Library is at the very heart of the campus, literally and figuratively.

The document includes phrases such as ‘catalysing research’, ‘accelerating research’, ‘moving toward being partners in research’. The recent launch of the Virtual Trinity Library (and related creation of 20 new jobs) is one of the new strategy’s flagship projects, ‘forming part of the University’s philanthropic campaign … and is complementary to the Old Library Redevelopment Project, which addresses the physical rejuvenation of the Library’.  The next steps are revisiting the Strategy (‘strategy lite’) and five-year implementation plan and further work with the University and the wider community on the fundamental issues identified in the university’s new Strategic Plan , especially around the UN Sustainable Goals.

Helen Shenton, Librarian and College Archivist (Library), The Library of Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin

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Article publication date: 1 January 1986

Libraries are the real centres of learning. The realisation of the objectives of education will be possible only with an adequately conceived system of libraries. The objectives of higher education are:

Bavakutty, M. (1986), "College Libraries in India: A Case Study", Library Management , Vol. 7 No. 1, pp. 2-47. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb054882

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Case Study: Red Hook (N.Y.) Public Library: One Small Win Creates Huge Ripples of Change

Location: Red Hook, N.Y. | Staff Size: 5.4 FTE | Service Area: 14,000 Ì Download PDF

• By leading Community Conversations and listening to residents, the Red Hook LTC team realized they could address a problem and improve how the community worked together by fixing the town’s stoplight. Choosing to act on this was a critical decision; it sent a signal that change was possible and that people’s concerns mattered.
• People were so energized by the forward progress that they wanted to keep going. The library is now working with residents and other partners to establish a community center.
• The LTC team’s efforts have inspired residents to get involved in ways they weren’t before. The library is playing a convening role, but in many cases, residents are developing solutions to problems.

The Village of Red Hook, New York—population 1,961—sits about 100 miles north of New York City near the Catskills and Hudson River Valley. It is home to Bard College, a nationally ranked liberal arts college that is the town’s largest employer.

When the discussion around community aspirations began in 2014, most residents reported how much they loved living in this community. A couple of issues quickly rose to the top that needed to be addressed, including one iconic one: the town’s only stoplight.

Every day, 14,000 vehicles passed through the light, which sat at the intersection of two state highways. The light’s timing was off, leading to wait times as long as seven minutes. Seeking to avoid the long delay, drivers frequently chose to cut through residential neighborhoods, endangering kids and adults who were walking and riding bikes in the streets.

The light had been a problem as long as people could remember. Everyone knew it, yet the earliest it was expected to be addressed was 2017—three years after this story begins. For a small town, this little traffic light was a big issue. Everyone in town knew it was a problem, but the sense of urgency was never fully communicated to the state. So it sat near the bottom of a long line of state-funded public infrastructure problems.

But a seemingly small act— people coming together in 2015 to talk, share ideas and x a problem—forged a new “can-do” narrative in Red Hook in which residents take ownership of their community in a different way. This substantial change was made possible by the efforts of a small group of leaders, organized by Red Hook Public Library, a small community library with only 4,500 cardholders.

Progress Made

Today, years ahead of schedule, the stoplight is fixed, but that’s just the beginning of this story. The work the library initiated to x the light became a catalyst for a variety of changes in improving the quality of life in Red Hook, making this small community better mobilized, better connected and more prepared to tackle complex challenges. Red Hook Public Library is now working in partnership with community groups, community leaders, Bard College and residents to take on a variety
of issues.

• The library is working to establish a community center to give more people opportunities to come together.
• And, seeing the benefits of their work, the library is helping to make connections between groups and encouraging others to take on community engagement work so more people can work toward the betterment of the community.

Being a part of changes like these also marked a big shift for the library.

“[Before, the library] was completely off people’s radars,” said Erica Freudenberger, who became library director in 2010. “It was this musty old building that was best to be avoided.”

The Journey

Freudenberger wanted to change the perception of the library and add more value to the community.

Shortly after being named library director, she started attending local Rotary and chamber of commerce meetings and joined a group of local leaders called Red Hook Together. Started by Erin Cannan, associate director of the Bard College Center for Civic Engagement, Red Hook Together met about every five weeks “as a way to address some of the ‘town and gown’ issues,” Cannan said.

At the first meeting Freudenberger attended, several people said they wished the community had a gathering place to help residents stay more informed about local issues.

“I said, ‘The good news is we have such a place.’ No one knew or believed me,” Freudenberger said. “That wasn’t their experience of the library. It was really about recognizing that we had to change the perception of who we were or what we were in the community. We started partnering with organizations and doing a lot of collaboration.”

For this reason, the library jumped at the chance to be part of the Libraries Transforming Communities (LTC) initiative, a partnership between the American Library Association and The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. LTC aims to strengthen the role of libraries in helping communities solve problems and work together more effectively. As part of the initiative, Harwood trained and coached 10 library teams, made up of library staff and community partners. Over two years, teams learned to apply Harwood’s Turning Outward approach, a practice or discipline of understanding a community in a deep way and then using that knowledge as a reference point for choices and actions.

Freudenberger said she and the rest of the Red Hook team, which included Cannan, “felt very smug” going into the LTC project, thinking they were used to working collaboratively, listening to the community and getting results.

“We thought we were outwardly focused, but we weren’t,” Cannan said. “We were willing to be partners with people because we wanted to get something out of the partnership. It was transactional.”

After an initial three-day training with The Harwood Institute and ALA in May 2014, Red Hook’s LTC team knew it needed to connect deeper with the community in a way that wasn’t quid pro quo. The group decided to go door-to-door in the small town asking people four basic questions using Harwood’s Ask exercise:

1. What kind of community do you want to live in? 2. Why is that important to you? 3. How is that different from how you see things now? 4. What are some of the things that need to happen to create that kind of change?

Brent Kovalchik, Village of Red Hook deputy mayor and a member of the LTC team, partnered with a Bard student to do most of the canvassing.

Residents welcomed the chance to share, Freudenberger said.

“People were really eager to let us know what they thought,” she said. “To have someone ask them what they thought and listen to what they had to say— that was very powerful.”

People shared many common concerns. They wanted a safer, better connected community. The town’s stoplight surfaced as one concrete way to help make that kind of community a reality.

“The stoplight was a pretty popular response to these questions,” Kovalchik said. “People wanted safe, walkable space and also a vibrant, economically viable village. The traffic light affected both the vibrancy of the village—people were just getting angry at the light—but also increasing the risks of conflicts with motorists and pedestrians.”

“While the mayor and everyone knew it [the stoplight] was a problem, I don’t think they realized to what extent people were really concerned about it,” Freudenberger said. “When we made it clear it was a priority, it became an action item. The mayor’s office got on it.”

The library’s engagement of the community resulted in laser- like attention to this issue. With support from the mayor’s office, the library encouraged people to contact their state representatives and the Department of Transportation and ask them to prioritize fixing the stoplight. The mayor made additional calls to accelerate the repair.

“It empowered people to take action and also encouraged us on the government level to put it up on a higher priority to address,” said Kovalchik. “Now it’s fixed.”

The library never explicitly publicized its role in harnessing community momentum to repair the stoplight.

“It wasn’t about saying, ‘We’re leading the charge’ or taking the credit,” said Freudenberger. “That’s not the point. The point was to make it happen.”

Freudenberger said while she thought she was Turned Outward because she had been engaging with the community since starting her role at the library, she was not.

She is asking different questions now.

“With LTC, we are looking beyond that,” she said. “Instead of thinking of ourselves as separate institutions, we are thinking of ourselves as a large ecosystem and asking, ‘What are the issues in our community? What really matters to people, and what should we be working on?’”

By the time Freudenberger and her colleagues met with other libraries at a gathering in January 2015, she realized a switch in her viewpoint had happened gradually.

“Outreach is when we go out and tell people about all the great stuff we’re doing at the library,” she said. “Engagement is going out and asking people what their dreams are for the community, then identifying what needs to happen in order to achieve those dreams.”

She listened to other library groups describe their outreach.

“I realized that [what they were describing] was exactly where we were seven months ago,” she said. “Our viewpoint had been changing, and it didn’t occur to me until that point.”

Putting the community first, as opposed to focusing first on how to promote the library, has, ironically, elevated the library.

“It’s been very liberating in a lot of ways,” Freudenberger said. “The more valuable we are to the community, the less I have to talk about the library, because other people do. When other people talk about how valuable we are, it’s much more credible than me saying it.”

Kovalchik said the experience of talking to residents through the Ask exercise “opened my eyes to a lot of things. We make decisions on the village level based on what we hear on the streets, but there are also a lot of assumptions.”

“When we are able to bring more people into the process, they feel they have more ownership in what is going on,” he said. “It’s a better way of working.”

Moving Forward

Hearing residents’ concerns about a lack of activities for teens and young adults in the community, the library, Bard College and Red Hook High School teamed up to provide science, technology and programming seminars in the high school, and then on a mobile program that took the program to rural areas without easy access to the library.

Bard students host summer science camps for younger students at the Red Hook library, and the library pays their stipends. The library and college were also part of a community art exhibit meant to appeal to Red Hook’s young adults.

According to the LTC team, the library’s knowledge of the community has become the lens through which they now evaluate their choices about how to support Red Hook. The stoplight started a momentum that transformed the library into a critical player in solving problems throughout the community. They are continuing their efforts to help Red Hook become better connected, including work on developing a community center.

At a Red Hook Together meeting in spring 2015, nearly a year after their LTC training and more than four years after Freudenberger started promoting the library at her first meeting with this group, the conversation was very different.

“Four and a half years ago, everyone was trying to imagine a place where everyone could go, and now at least six or seven of the people [at the meeting] said they wanted their organizations to be more like the library,” she said. “It was huge, a really significant shift that was a really, really cool and amazing moment. That signaled the biggest shift for our library, that the perception had changed that dramatically.”

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Paradigm shift in Resources, Services and Products: A case study of Maulana Azad Library System, AMU Aligarh

Maulana Azad Library is the Central Library of the Aligarh Muslim University which caters to the educational, research and extension needs of the University. The Library holds invaluable collection of books and journals in almost all the disciplines of study. It is world famous for manuscripts and rare books in Oriental Languages and ranked the largest library system of India and second largest in Asia with over 110 satellite libraries. The Information Technology (IT) played a vital role in the advancement of each and every segment of our society. Now a days, libraries are capable of and trying to accomplish the new IT based services to fulfil the information needs of the patrons in more enhanced and speedy manner. This paper is aimed to highlight the developments and modernization activities of Maulana Azad Library system of AMU. It elaborates as how with the use and impact of IT, the huge traditional library system has swiftly turned into a modern and advanced library system in a short span of time and there is a paradigm shift in its resources, services and products. The study also talks about social networking tools, currently used for engaging directly with the people/patrons.

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The paper explores the use of social media among the students of northeast central universities for accessing and availing of services provided by the institutional libraries. Where an analysis was undertaken to highlight some key factors like the frequency of use and devices they use for the use of the institutional library. The research was conducted to know the time spent by both the students and research scholars of the selected universities, how many times they spent per day, and how many times they spent in a week using social media. The purpose of using social media in the selected universities is being analyzed in this paper. The SNSs that impact majorly on social media and how frequently students, research scholars use social media for using SNSs, what were the top SNSs used by using social media are described. Lastly, the pros and cons of social media are also explained with their support level.

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Social media tools are important in each and every discipline now days. The Library and its services are mostly dependable on social media in this internet age. It acts asa media between the library resources and its users. This paper basically highlights the availability of different types of social media tools, Social networking sites like Facebooks, Twitter, Myspace, LinkedIn, YouTube, Ning, Library thing, Wikis and Blogs etc.The advantages and disadvantages and the importance of social media tools in Library. Also briefs the use and its application in library services. This paper aims to give a brief overview of the social media tools in particular to library activities.

Dr. K Dhanush Raja MA, M.L.I.Sc, MPhil, PhD , Jaya Lakshmi

Social Networking Sites (SNSs) are becoming an integral part of life all the educated peoples. Now a Day Social media are mainstreams all the activities. Facebook and Twitter have more than 900 million users. Many businesses, cultural organizations and some institutions are leveraging social media to achieve their strategic goals. A review of the literature across library and non-library sectors will investigate the current social media environment relating to strategy, communication and engagement. This Social Networking Technology (SNT) is offering one of the opportunities to reach library users. This SNSs provide an innovative and effective way of connecting users. Most of the International University Libraries have attached a link of a social networking site to their library’s web pages. In this paper describes Social Networking Definition, Values, Benefits of Social Networking Sites to Indian Libraries, Features of Social Networking Services in Library, Practicing Social Networking in Library Services, Challenges Using Social Networking in Libraries and Future roles of Librarians. And this paper explains how this Social Network will help the major library and information services. Such as Information Communication, Information Delivery and knowledge organization. KEYWORDS: Social Networking Technology, Information Communication, Knowledge Organization, Indian Library, Digital Library, Social Media`s.

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Atkinson, M.K. , 2023. Organizational Resilience and Change at UMass Memorial , Harvard Business Publishing: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Available from Harvard Business Publishing Abstract The UMass Memorial Health Care (UMMHC or UMass) case is an examination of the impact of crisis or high uncertainty events on organizations. As a global pandemic unfolds, the case examines the ways in which UMMHC manages crisis and poses questions around organizational change and opportunity for growth after such major events. The case begins with a background of UMMHC, including problems the organization was up against before the pandemic, then transitions to the impact of crisis on UMMHC operations and its subsequent response, and concludes with challenges that the organization must grapple with in the months and years ahead. A crisis event can occur at any time for any organization. Organizational leaders must learn to manage stakeholders both inside and outside the organization throughout the duration of crisis and beyond. Additionally, organizational decision-makers must learn how to deal with existing weaknesses and problems the organization had before crisis took center stage, balancing those challenges with the need to respond to an emergency all the while not neglecting major existing problem points. This case is well-suited for courses on strategy determination and implementation, organizational behavior, and leadership.

The case describes the challenges facing Shlomit Schaal, MD, PhD, the newly appointed Chair of UMass Memorial Health Care’s Department of Ophthalmology. Dr. Schaal had come to UMass in Worcester, Massachusetts, in the summer of 2016 from the University of Louisville (KY) where she had a thriving clinical practice and active research lab, and was Director of the Retina Service. Before applying for the Chair position at UMass she had some initial concerns about the position but became fascinated by the opportunities it offered to grow a service that had historically been among the smallest and weakest programs in the UMass system and had experienced a rapid turnover in Chairs over the past few years. She also was excited to become one of a very small number of female Chairs of ophthalmology programs in the country. 

Dr. Schaal began her new position with ambitious plans and her usual high level of energy, but immediately ran into resistance from the faculty and staff of the department.  The case explores the steps she took, including implementing a LEAN approach in the department, and the leadership approaches she used to overcome that resistance and build support for the changes needed to grow and improve ophthalmology services at the medical center. 

This case describes efforts to promote racial equity in healthcare financing from the perspective of one public health organization, Community Care Cooperative (C3). C3 is a Medicaid Accountable Care Organization–i.e., an organization set up to manage payment from Medicaid, a public health insurance option for low-income people. The case describes C3’s approach to addressing racial equity from two vantage points: first, its programmatic efforts to channel financing into community health centers that serve large proportions of Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC), and second, its efforts to address racial equity within its own internal operations (e.g., through altering hiring and promotion processes). The case can be used to help students understand structural issues pertaining to race in healthcare delivery and financing, to introduce students to the basics of payment systems in healthcare, and/or to highlight how organizations can work internally to address racial equity.

Kerrissey, M.J. & Kuznetsova, M. , 2022. Killing the Pager at ZSFG , Harvard Business Publishing: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health case collection. Available from Harvard Business Publishing Abstract This case is about organizational change and technology. It follows the efforts of one physician as they try to move their department past using the pager, a device that persisted in American medicine despite having long been outdated by superior communication technology. The case reveals the complex organizational factors that have made this persistence possible, such as differing interdepartmental priorities, the perceived benefits of simple technology, and the potential drawbacks of applying typical continuous improvement approaches to technology change. Ultimately the physician in the case is not able to rid their department of the pager, despite pursuing a thorough continuous improvement effort and piloting a viable alternative; the case ends with the physician having an opportunity to try again and asks students to assess whether doing so is wise. The case can be used in class to help students apply the general concepts of organizational change to the particular context of technology, discuss the forces of stasis and change in medicine, and to familiarize students with the uses and limits of continuous improvement methods. 

Yatsko, P. & Koh, H. , 2021. Dr. Joan Reede and the Embedding of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Harvard Medical School , Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health case collection. Available from Harvard Business Publishing Abstract For more than 30 years, Dr. Joan Reede worked to increase the diversity of voices and viewpoints heard at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and at its affiliate teaching hospitals and institutes. Reede, HMS’s inaugural dean for Diversity and Community Partnership, as well as a professor and physician, conceived and launched more than 20 programs to improve the recruitment, retention, and promotion of individuals from racial and ethnic groups historically underrepresented in medicine (UiMs). These efforts have substantially diversified physician faculty at HMS and built pipelines for UiM talent into academic medicine and biosciences. Reede helped embed the promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) not only into Harvard Medical School’s mission and community values, but also into the DEI agenda in academic medicine nationally. To do so, she found allies and formed enduring coalitions based on shared ownership. She bootstrapped and hustled for resources when few readily existed. And she persuaded skeptics by building programs using data-driven approaches. She also overcame discriminatory behaviors and other obstacles synonymous with being Black and female in American society. Strong core values and sense of purpose were keys to her resilience, as well as to her leadership in the ongoing effort to give historically marginalized groups greater voice in medicine and science.

Cases Available for Free Download

This case summarizes the toxic water crisis in Flint, Michigan between 2011 and the end of 2016, which followed the decision to switch the city’s public water supply from Lake Huron to the more corrosive Flint River. It outlines the factors that led to the initial government decision, and the social, economic, health, and policy consequences that followed. The case highlights the role of citizens, scientists, and activists in raising public awareness of the crisis and the toxic long-term effects of lead poisoning on affected children. It also illustrates the challenges and questions such a crisis poses for other communities in the United States and globally.

The case is accompanied by an instructor’s note, role play exercise, and discussion guide with an accompanying teaching graphic.

Teaching note available for faculty/instructors .

Gordon, R., Rottingen, J.-A. & Hoffman, S. , 2014. The Meningitis Vaccine Project , Harvard University: Global Health Education and Learning Incubator. Access online Abstract This case follows the vaccine development for Meningitis A, a disease that routinely caused deadly epidemics in Sub-Saharan Africa. The case explores why such a vaccine had not been developed previously and how the creation of the Meningitis Vaccine Project (MVP) - a partnership between the World Health Organization (WHO) and PATH, a non-governmental organization - enabled the vaccine to be successfully developed over 10 years by creating a novel product development partnership. Students examine why the public/private partnership was successful and how such a model could be applied to the development of other vaccines and health technologies. Additionally, the case explores the strategies applied by Marc LaForce, the MVP’s director and veteran public health advocate, to make the MVP a success. In particular, the case examines the management skills LaForce exercised during his tenure to develop a vaccine that affected African countries could afford through their own health budgets.

This module will present two unfolding case studies based on real-world, actual events. The cases will require participants to review videos embedded into three modules and a summary module: Introduction to Concepts of Social Determinant of Health and Seeking Racial Equity  Case Study on Health and Healthcare Context - Greensboro Health Disparities Collaborative (GHDC)​    Case Study on Social and Community Context - Renaissance Community Cooperative (RCC) Summary (Optional)

The learning objectives for the modules are related to achieving the Healthy People 2020 Social Determinants of Health Objectives – specifically the (1) Health and Healthcare Context, and (2) Social and Community Context.   

Chaumont, C. & Anyona, M. , 2020. Caught in a Storm: The World Health Organization and the 2014 Ebola Outbreak , Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard Kennedy School. Access online Abstract The case recounts the events of the 2014-2016 West Africa Ebola Outbreak, starting with the death of patient zero, a young Guinean boy named Emile Ouamouno in December 2013 and ending in August 2014 when the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), an international legal tool aimed to draw additional attention and resources to particular health events which present a global risk. In doing so, the case particularly examines the role of the World Health Organization, a key actor in the epidemic, and provides further context into the strategy, finances, and organizational design of the organization. Additional information related to the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), infectious disease epidemics, and the socioeconomic and political context of the three countries most affected by the outbreak (Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea) is also provided. The case study draws upon interviews with key experts involved in both the management of the epidemic and its aftermath, including Dr. Suerie Moon, Study Director of the Independent Panel on the Global Response to Ebola, Amb. Jimmy Kolker, then Assistant Secretary for Global Affairs in the United States Department of Health and Human Services, and Dr. Bruce Aylward, Special Representative of the Director-General for the Ebola Response from September 2014 to July 2016. The case is accompanied by an epilogue which retraces events after the PHEIC was declared in August 2014, and provides several quotes from key stakeholders involved in the outbreak, providing further context into how the epidemic was eventually contained, and which lessons could be learned from it.

Focus on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

This case describes and explores the development of the first medical transitions clinic in Louisiana by a group of community members, health professionals, and students at Tulane Medical School in 2015.  The context surrounding health in metro New Orleans, the social and structural determinants of health, and mass incarceration and correctional health care are described in detail. The case elucidates why and how the Formerly Incarcerated Transitions (FIT) clinic was established, including the operationalization of the clinic and the challenges to providing healthcare to this population. The case describes the central role of medical students as case managers at the FIT clinic, and how community organizations were engaged in care provision and the development of the model.  The case concludes with a discussion of the importance of advocacy amongst health care professionals.

Yatsko, P. & Koh, H. , 2017. Dr. Jonathan Woodson, Military Health System Reform, and National Digital Health Strategy , Harvard Business Publishing: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health case collection. Available from Harvard Business Publishing Abstract Dr. Jonathan Woodson faced more formidable challenges than most in his storied medical, public health, and military career, starting with multiple rotations in combat zones around the world. He subsequently took on ever more complicated assignments, including reforming the country’s bloated Military Health System (MHS) in his role as assistant secretary of defense for health affairs at the U.S. Department of Defense from 2010 to 2016. As the director of Boston University’s Institute for Health System Innovation and Policy starting in 2016, he devised a National Digital Health Strategy (NDHS) to harness the myriad disparate health care innovations taking place around the country, with the goal of making the U.S. health care system more efficient, patient-centered, safe, and equitable for all Americans. How did Woodson—who was also a major general in the U.S. Army Reserves and a skilled vascular surgeon—approach such complicated problems? In-depth research and analysis, careful stakeholder review, strategic coalition building, and clear, insightful communication were some of the critical leadership skills Woodson employed to achieve his missions.

This teaching case study examines psychological trauma in a community context and the relevance, both positive and negative, of social determinants of health. Healthy People 2020 views people residing in communities with large-scale psychological trauma as an emerging issue in mental health and mental health disorders (Healthy People, 2016). The case study, which focuses on Newark, New Jersey, addresses three of the five key determinants of health: social and community context, health and health care, and neighborhood and built environment. The three key determinants are addressed using psychological trauma as an exemplar in the context of trauma-informed systems. The social and community context is addressed using concepts of social cohesion, civic participation, and discrimination. Access to health and health care are addressed with discussion of access to mental health and primary care services, health literacy, and the medical home model. Neighborhood and built environment are viewed through the lens of available government and NGO programs and resources to improve the physical environment with a focus on quality of housing, crime and violence, and environmental conditions. Upstream interventions designed to improve mental health and well-being that support trauma-informed systems are analyzed. The use of Newark as the case study setting allows a real-life exploration of each of these three key determinants of health.

This case study has four sections – introduction, case study, side bar, and vignettes. Learners should work through the case, access appropriate resources, and work in a team for successful completion.

Al Kasir, A., Coles, E. & Siegrist, R. , 2019. Anchoring Health beyond Clinical Care: UMass Memorial Health Care’s Anchor Mission Project , Harvard Business Publishing: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health case collection. Available from Harvard Business Publishing Abstract As the Chief Administrative Officer of UMass Memorial Health Care (UMMHC) and president of UMass Memorial (UMM) Community Hospitals, Douglas Brown had just received unanimous and enthusiastic approval to pursue his "Anchor Mission" project at UMMHC in Worcester, Massachusetts. He was extremely excited by the board's support, but also quite apprehensive about how to make the Anchor Mission a reality. Doug had spearheaded the Anchor Mission from its earliest exploratory efforts. The goal of the health system's Anchor Mission-an idea developed by the Democracy Collaborative, an economic think tank-was to address the social determinants of health in its community beyond the traditional approach of providing excellent clinical care. He had argued that UMMHC had an obligation as the largest employer and economic force in Central Massachusetts to consider the broader development of the community and to address non-clinical factors, like homelessness and social inequality that made people unhealthy. To achieve this goal, UMMHC's Anchor Mission would undertake three types of interventions: local hiring, local sourcing/purchasing, and place-based community investment projects. While the board's enthusiasm was palpable and inspiring, Doug knew that sustaining it would require concrete accomplishments and a positive return on any investments the health system made in the project. The approval was just the first step. Innovation and new ways of thinking would be necessary. The bureaucracy behind a multi-billion-dollar healthcare organization would need to change. Even the doctors and nurses would need to change! He knew that the project had enormous potential but would become even more daunting from here.

Weinberger, E. , 2017. Coloring the Narrative: How to Use Storytelling to Create Social Change in Skin Tone Ideals , Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health: Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders (STRIPED). Download free of charge Abstract Many millions of people around the world experience the pervasive, and often painful, societal messages of colorism, where lighter skin tones are asserted to be more attractive and to reflect greater affluence, power, education, and social status. Even in places where the destructive effects of colorism are fairly well understood, far less is known about the problem of skin-lightening (really, it’s “skin bleaching”) creams and lotions, and the health risks that consumers assume with these products. In this teaching case, the protagonists are two women who have recently immigrated to the United States from Nigeria and Thailand, both with a life-time of experience with these products like many of the women of their home countries. As the story unfolds, they struggle along with the rest of the characters to copy with the push and pull of community norms vs. commercial influences and the challenge of promoting community health in the face of many societal and corporate obstacles. How can the deeply ingrained messages of colorism be effectively confronted and transformed to advance social change without alienating the community members we may most want to reach? Teaching note and supplemental slides available for faculty/instructors .

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Browse our case library

Wang, M. & Kane, N.M. , 2011. The Green and Healthy Homes Initiative (GHHI) , Harvard Business Publishing: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health case collection. Available from Harvard Business Publishing Abstract Ruth Ann Norton, executive director of the National Coalition to End Childhood Lead Poisoning (CECLP), founded the Green & Healthy Homes Initiative (GHHI) in order to leverage newly available federal funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) for weatherizing low-income housing. Unfortunately, by June 2011, the ARRA funding was winding down, and Norton was looking for other, sustainable sources of financing to keep the GHHI program alive.

Kane, N.M. & Alidina, S. , 2008. Attacking Heart Disease in Suffolk County , Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health case collection. Download free of charge Abstract “Suffolk County is experiencing elevated cardiovascular disease mortality relative to New York State,” explained Dr. Humayun Chaudhry, Commissioner for the Department of Health Services of Suffolk County. Given the general affluence of the area, he finds the CVD mortality rates "a paradoxical situation. We need to determine strategies to address this high priority health issue for our county."  Teaching note available for faculty/instructors .

Quelch, J.A. & Rodriguez, M. , 2014. Cancer Screening in Japan: Market Research and Segmentation , Harvard Business Publishing. Available from Harvard Business Publishing Abstract Since founding CancerScan in 2008, Jun Fukuyoshi and Yoshiki Ishikawa had helped to improve cancer screening rates in Japan. Between 2005 and 2007, awareness of breast cancer in Japan rose from 55% to 70%, but the incidence of breast cancer screenings remained constant. Jun and Yoshiki applied marketing research techniques to increase the screening rate for breast cancer, a disease which killed over 12,000 Japanese women in 2011. Cancer screening initiatives accounted for 60% of the company's 2013 sales of $2.5 million.

Kane, N.M. & Madden, S.L. , 2013. Implementing a Patient-Centered Medical Home on Mount Desert Island , Harvard Business Publishing: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health case collection. Available from Harvard Business Publishing Abstract This case presents organizational challenges facing a physician champion of the Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH). Dr. Julian Kuffler, working with his employer, the Mount Desert Island Hospital System (MDI), hoped to persuade the primary care physicians in the system to embrace the PCMH care model. Physician resistance was strongly opposed to some of the key principles of PCMH, such as managing the health of a defined population, standardizing chronic care management protocols, delegating patient care tasks to non-physician members of a care team, and to having strong physician leadership at the system level. At the same time, MDI was a small rural “critical access hospital” with declining admissions, predominantly outpatient-based revenues, and deteriorating finances. MDI leadership viewed high quality primary care to be essential for MDI to be able to attract the best health system partner with which it could affiliate to become part of a larger, more financially viable organization. MDI leadership also hoped to find a partner that could also support its participation in new population health arrangements such as accountable care organizations.

Milstein, D., Madden, S.L. & MacCracken, L. , 2015. Integrating Private Practice and Hospital-Based Breast Services at Baystate Health (Parts A & B) , Harvard Business Publishing: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health case collection. Available from Harvard Business Publishing Abstract Dr. Laurie Gianturco (“Dr. G.”), Chief of Radiology at Baystate Health and President of the private imaging practice Radiology & Imaging, Inc. (“R&I”), and her partner for this project, Suzanne Hendery, VP of Marketing & Communications at Baystate Health, considered their new assignment. With Baystate leadership’s full executive sponsorship and support, but no additional budget, they were tasked with consolidating two competing practices—one operated by R&I, the other by Baystate Medical Center—to form a new breast services center under the Baystate umbrella. The consolidation would simplify redundant Baystate-affiliated breast services offerings, making the system less confusing for patients and providers while giving Baystate the opportunity to offer more patient-centered services as well as reducing its operating costs and boosting revenues. They knew it would be a complicated project, involving two competing physician practice cultures, three clinical specialty orientations, the potential disruption of existing referral networks, and the merger of imaging services for healthy women along with treatment for women with breast cancer. Despite these challenges, they banded together to define a patient-driven culture, create an integrated program, and build a strong brand anchored by the new facility. Their goal was to gain a competitive advantage by developing a relationship-based approach that would exceed customer (patients and referring physicians) expectations for service. “The financial argument was the easy part,” Dr. G reflected. “How to actually design a model of care is where we came to an impasse.”   

Weinberger, E. , 2015. Full of Surprises: Dietary Supplements and the Gym, or, a Tale of Corporate Social Responsibility , Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health: Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders (STRIPED). Download free of charge Abstract Working out at the gym is a healthy endeavor, but many gyms endorse unhealthful practices. They may advertise or sell dietary supplements for weight loss or muscle building that not only fail to do what they promise, but contain potentially dangerous ingredients. Callie Guertin is a primary care physician in Hamilton, in the fictitious U.S. state of Columbia, and a daily gym-goer who is slowly awakening to the fact that her chosen new gym, MuscleTone, sells weight-loss supplements at its welcome desk. She wants them to stop; but what can she do on her own? With some guidance from a young activist, Stacie Lubin, and her sympathetic personal trainer, Rudi, Guertin learns skills of coalition building to pressure the MuscleTone chain to change its practices. Perhaps, using principles of corporate social responsibility, or CSR, MuscleTone can be made to realize that abandoning sales and advertising of supplements can produce a good result for everybody—healthier customers, of course, but also a new marketing campaign touting MuscleTone as the gym for “healthy living”? Guertin and her allies are working on MuscleTone to make just this case. Teaching note available for faculty/instructors .

Solomon, C. & Kane, N.M. , 2016. Strategic Change at Whitman-Walker Health , Harvard Business Publishing: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health case collection. Available from Harvard Business Publishing Abstract In the seven years since Don Blanchon was hired as the Chief Executive Officer of Whitman-Walker Health, it had transitioned into a primary care-based community health center and a patient-centered medical home serving a diverse population in a rapidly changing area of Washington, DC. The Affordable Care Act of 2010 would, in Blanchon’s view, increase access to providers for WWH’s patient population, thereby increasing the competition. The implications of this change left senior management with unresolved strategic questions. Should WWH pursue a “hybrid FQHC model,” a new location, new services, or a future strategic partnership with a large health system? What should the next direction be for WWH, and how should it get there?

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Case Study Research Method in Psychology

Saul Mcleod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

Learn about our Editorial Process

Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

On This Page:

Case studies are in-depth investigations of a person, group, event, or community. Typically, data is gathered from various sources using several methods (e.g., observations & interviews).

The case study research method originated in clinical medicine (the case history, i.e., the patient’s personal history). In psychology, case studies are often confined to the study of a particular individual.

The information is mainly biographical and relates to events in the individual’s past (i.e., retrospective), as well as to significant events that are currently occurring in his or her everyday life.

The case study is not a research method, but researchers select methods of data collection and analysis that will generate material suitable for case studies.

Freud (1909a, 1909b) conducted very detailed investigations into the private lives of his patients in an attempt to both understand and help them overcome their illnesses.

This makes it clear that the case study is a method that should only be used by a psychologist, therapist, or psychiatrist, i.e., someone with a professional qualification.

There is an ethical issue of competence. Only someone qualified to diagnose and treat a person can conduct a formal case study relating to atypical (i.e., abnormal) behavior or atypical development.

 Famous Case Studies

• Anna O – One of the most famous case studies, documenting psychoanalyst Josef Breuer’s treatment of “Anna O” (real name Bertha Pappenheim) for hysteria in the late 1800s using early psychoanalytic theory.
• Little Hans – A child psychoanalysis case study published by Sigmund Freud in 1909 analyzing his five-year-old patient Herbert Graf’s house phobia as related to the Oedipus complex.
• Bruce/Brenda – Gender identity case of the boy (Bruce) whose botched circumcision led psychologist John Money to advise gender reassignment and raise him as a girl (Brenda) in the 1960s.
• Genie Wiley – Linguistics/psychological development case of the victim of extreme isolation abuse who was studied in 1970s California for effects of early language deprivation on acquiring speech later in life.
• Phineas Gage – One of the most famous neuropsychology case studies analyzes personality changes in railroad worker Phineas Gage after an 1848 brain injury involving a tamping iron piercing his skull.

Clinical Case Studies

• Studying the effectiveness of psychotherapy approaches with an individual patient
• Assessing and treating mental illnesses like depression, anxiety disorders, PTSD
• Neuropsychological cases investigating brain injuries or disorders

Child Psychology Case Studies

• Studying psychological development from birth through adolescence
• Cases of learning disabilities, autism spectrum disorders, ADHD
• Effects of trauma, abuse, deprivation on development

Types of Case Studies

• Explanatory case studies : Used to explore causation in order to find underlying principles. Helpful for doing qualitative analysis to explain presumed causal links.
• Exploratory case studies : Used to explore situations where an intervention being evaluated has no clear set of outcomes. It helps define questions and hypotheses for future research.
• Descriptive case studies : Describe an intervention or phenomenon and the real-life context in which it occurred. It is helpful for illustrating certain topics within an evaluation.
• Multiple-case studies : Used to explore differences between cases and replicate findings across cases. Helpful for comparing and contrasting specific cases.
• Intrinsic : Used to gain a better understanding of a particular case. Helpful for capturing the complexity of a single case.
• Collective : Used to explore a general phenomenon using multiple case studies. Helpful for jointly studying a group of cases in order to inquire into the phenomenon.

Where Do You Find Data for a Case Study?

There are several places to find data for a case study. The key is to gather data from multiple sources to get a complete picture of the case and corroborate facts or findings through triangulation of evidence. Most of this information is likely qualitative (i.e., verbal description rather than measurement), but the psychologist might also collect numerical data.

1. Primary sources

• Interviews – Interviewing key people related to the case to get their perspectives and insights. The interview is an extremely effective procedure for obtaining information about an individual, and it may be used to collect comments from the person’s friends, parents, employer, workmates, and others who have a good knowledge of the person, as well as to obtain facts from the person him or herself.
• Observations – Observing behaviors, interactions, processes, etc., related to the case as they unfold in real-time.
• Documents & Records – Reviewing private documents, diaries, public records, correspondence, meeting minutes, etc., relevant to the case.

2. Secondary sources

• News/Media – News coverage of events related to the case study.
• Academic articles – Journal articles, dissertations etc. that discuss the case.
• Government reports – Official data and records related to the case context.
• Books/films – Books, documentaries or films discussing the case.

3. Archival records

Searching historical archives, museum collections and databases to find relevant documents, visual/audio records related to the case history and context.

Public archives like newspapers, organizational records, photographic collections could all include potentially relevant pieces of information to shed light on attitudes, cultural perspectives, common practices and historical contexts related to psychology.

4. Organizational records

Organizational records offer the advantage of often having large datasets collected over time that can reveal or confirm psychological insights.

Of course, privacy and ethical concerns regarding confidential data must be navigated carefully.

However, with proper protocols, organizational records can provide invaluable context and empirical depth to qualitative case studies exploring the intersection of psychology and organizations.

• Organizational/industrial psychology research : Organizational records like employee surveys, turnover/retention data, policies, incident reports etc. may provide insight into topics like job satisfaction, workplace culture and dynamics, leadership issues, employee behaviors etc.
• Clinical psychology : Therapists/hospitals may grant access to anonymized medical records to study aspects like assessments, diagnoses, treatment plans etc. This could shed light on clinical practices.
• School psychology : Studies could utilize anonymized student records like test scores, grades, disciplinary issues, and counseling referrals to study child development, learning barriers, effectiveness of support programs, and more.

How do I Write a Case Study in Psychology?

Follow specified case study guidelines provided by a journal or your psychology tutor. General components of clinical case studies include: background, symptoms, assessments, diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes. Interpreting the information means the researcher decides what to include or leave out. A good case study should always clarify which information is the factual description and which is an inference or the researcher’s opinion.

1. Introduction

• Provide background on the case context and why it is of interest, presenting background information like demographics, relevant history, and presenting problem.
• Compare briefly to similar published cases if applicable. Clearly state the focus/importance of the case.

2. Case Presentation

• Describe the presenting problem in detail, including symptoms, duration,and impact on daily life.
• Include client demographics like age and gender, information about social relationships, and mental health history.
• Describe all physical, emotional, and/or sensory symptoms reported by the client.
• Use patient quotes to describe the initial complaint verbatim. Follow with full-sentence summaries of relevant history details gathered, including key components that led to a working diagnosis.
• Summarize clinical exam results, namely orthopedic/neurological tests, imaging, lab tests, etc. Note actual results rather than subjective conclusions. Provide images if clearly reproducible/anonymized.
• Clearly state the working diagnosis or clinical impression before transitioning to management.

3. Management and Outcome

• Indicate the total duration of care and number of treatments given over what timeframe. Use specific names/descriptions for any therapies/interventions applied.
• Present the results of the intervention,including any quantitative or qualitative data collected.
• For outcomes, utilize visual analog scales for pain, medication usage logs, etc., if possible. Include patient self-reports of improvement/worsening of symptoms. Note the reason for discharge/end of care.

4. Discussion

• Analyze the case, exploring contributing factors, limitations of the study, and connections to existing research.
• Analyze the effectiveness of the intervention,considering factors like participant adherence, limitations of the study, and potential alternative explanations for the results.
• Identify any questions raised in the case analysis and relate insights to established theories and current research if applicable. Avoid definitive claims about physiological explanations.
• Offer clinical implications, and suggest future research directions.

5. Additional Items

• Thank specific assistants for writing support only. No patient acknowledgments.
• References should directly support any key claims or quotes included.
• Use tables/figures/images only if substantially informative. Include permissions and legends/explanatory notes.
• Provides detailed (rich qualitative) information.
• Provides insight for further research.
• Permitting investigation of otherwise impractical (or unethical) situations.

Case studies allow a researcher to investigate a topic in far more detail than might be possible if they were trying to deal with a large number of research participants (nomothetic approach) with the aim of ‘averaging’.

Because of their in-depth, multi-sided approach, case studies often shed light on aspects of human thinking and behavior that would be unethical or impractical to study in other ways.

Research that only looks into the measurable aspects of human behavior is not likely to give us insights into the subjective dimension of experience, which is important to psychoanalytic and humanistic psychologists.

Case studies are often used in exploratory research. They can help us generate new ideas (that might be tested by other methods). They are an important way of illustrating theories and can help show how different aspects of a person’s life are related to each other.

The method is, therefore, important for psychologists who adopt a holistic point of view (i.e., humanistic psychologists ).

Limitations

• Lacking scientific rigor and providing little basis for generalization of results to the wider population.
• Researchers’ own subjective feelings may influence the case study (researcher bias).
• Difficult to replicate.
• Time-consuming and expensive.
• The volume of data, together with the time restrictions in place, impacted the depth of analysis that was possible within the available resources.

Because a case study deals with only one person/event/group, we can never be sure if the case study investigated is representative of the wider body of “similar” instances. This means the conclusions drawn from a particular case may not be transferable to other settings.

Because case studies are based on the analysis of qualitative (i.e., descriptive) data , a lot depends on the psychologist’s interpretation of the information she has acquired.

This means that there is a lot of scope for Anna O , and it could be that the subjective opinions of the psychologist intrude in the assessment of what the data means.

For example, Freud has been criticized for producing case studies in which the information was sometimes distorted to fit particular behavioral theories (e.g., Little Hans ).

This is also true of Money’s interpretation of the Bruce/Brenda case study (Diamond, 1997) when he ignored evidence that went against his theory.

Breuer, J., & Freud, S. (1895).  Studies on hysteria . Standard Edition 2: London.

Curtiss, S. (1981). Genie: The case of a modern wild child .

Diamond, M., & Sigmundson, K. (1997). Sex Reassignment at Birth: Long-term Review and Clinical Implications. Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine , 151(3), 298-304

Freud, S. (1909a). Analysis of a phobia of a five year old boy. In The Pelican Freud Library (1977), Vol 8, Case Histories 1, pages 169-306

Freud, S. (1909b). Bemerkungen über einen Fall von Zwangsneurose (Der “Rattenmann”). Jb. psychoanal. psychopathol. Forsch ., I, p. 357-421; GW, VII, p. 379-463; Notes upon a case of obsessional neurosis, SE , 10: 151-318.

Harlow J. M. (1848). Passage of an iron rod through the head.  Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, 39 , 389–393.

Harlow, J. M. (1868).  Recovery from the Passage of an Iron Bar through the Head .  Publications of the Massachusetts Medical Society. 2  (3), 327-347.

Money, J., & Ehrhardt, A. A. (1972).  Man & Woman, Boy & Girl : The Differentiation and Dimorphism of Gender Identity from Conception to Maturity. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Money, J., & Tucker, P. (1975). Sexual signatures: On being a man or a woman.

Further Information

• Case Study Approach
• Case Study Method
• Enhancing the Quality of Case Studies in Health Services Research
• “We do things together” A case study of “couplehood” in dementia
• Using mixed methods for evaluating an integrative approach to cancer care: a case study

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Iris de Freitas Brazão: A Legacy in Law

Iris de Freitas Brazão (1896-1989)

With thanks to the Archives at the University of Aberystwyth for the images used in the header and thumbnail for this article. (Above and right.)

A note on Guyana:

Iris spent most of her life living in the country that was then the colonised nation of British Guiana. This country has since won its independence and is now called Guyana. As independence did not come until Iris was almost 70 and already retired, in this article it is referred to throughout under its old name ‘British Guiana’, in order to highlight the adverse colonial conditions that Iris, as an illegitimate woman of colour, so adeptly navigated.

Early Life and Education

Iris de Freitas Brazão was born on October 29 1896 in Bay St, Kingston, Bridgetown, Barbados. Her parents were Manuel de Freitas, a businessman who started out as a leather and bootmaker and later expanded to other ventures, and Amanda Brathwaite about whom little is known other than that she was a mixed-race Barbadian local. (Brathwaite is a prevalent name on Barbados and is likely to derive from the slave-owning family who operated a plantation on the island.) Iris’s parents were not married, a significant social transgression at the time which would have an impact on Iris’s societal status. It seems, however, that she was acknowledged and supported by her father, Manuel, despite him having two legitimate children with his wife Antonia (and various other illegitimate offspring).

Although Iris and her father certainly remained close, her mother would have been Iris’s primary caregiver growing up, and together the two moved from Barbados to 1 Lombard St, Georgetown, British Guiana, sometime between 1897 and 1910, whilst Iris was still quite young. She later admitted that she had no early childhood recollections of Barbados, although she would return later in life to further her education.

Her studies most likely began in British Guiana where we think she was first privately tutored, she then attended the Roman Catholic school St Ursula’s in Georgetown from 1910-1916. There was also a more prestigious sister school, St Rose’s, that Iris’s father would have been able to afford the fees for. However, the parents of girls at St Rose’s would not allow their white daughters to associate with girls of a lower social standing. Since Iris was both mixed-race and illegitimate, she would not have been able to attend. Despite these barriers, Iris continued with her education at St Ursula’s and developed ambitions, not of a legal profession, but of a life on the stage. In her first role in a school production, Iris played the part of a lawyer, but unfortunately also discovered she suffered from stage fright, putting an end to her childhood dream of becoming an actress.

Iris completed her education at St Ursula’s in 1916, but although she was at this point nearly 20 years old, she did not immediately start university due to travel restrictions as a result of the First World War. Instead, she returned to Barbados, the island of her birth, and studied for two years there, at Queen’s College.

Flu and False Starts

Towards the end of the First World War in 1918, she travelled to Canada to study modern languages at St Hilda’s College (part of Trinity College) at the University of Toronto. During her stay, the college was briefly closed for a month due to the Spanish Influenza epidemic from October-November 1918, an experience perhaps eerily familiar to modern students. She eventually left Toronto before completing her studies or sitting any exams. We can only speculate as to the reason for Iris’s premature departure from Toronto, as she left no record indicating the reason for her decision. She may have faced significant difficulties in Canada at that time due to her mixed-race heritage, or she may have always intended to study in the UK, with Toronto being her only other option when current events stood in her way.

In fact, we do know that Iris had initially applied to study at  what was then the University College of Wales (now Aberystwyth University)  in 1917, perhaps on the advice of the English mistress at Queen’s College in Barbados, Miss Jones, who was an alumna of the university. Unfortunately, travel to Wales would have required her to cross the Atlantic, which was then considered a danger zone due to the ongoing war, so she was not given permission to travel at the time. Upon leaving Toronto, however, the opportunity to study in Wales was once again open to her.

Undergraduate Studies in Wales

Higher Education in the early 20 th century was not quite so inflexible as it is today, and Iris’s studies reflect this in the variety both of subjects of study, but also the number of institutions at which she studied. Iris was able to conduct a number of different courses of study concurrently, so painting a clear picture of where she studied when can prove a bit of a challenge. (See our timeline at the bottom of the page for a visual aid.)

Iris began her tertiary education at Aberystwyth in January 1919. She completed courses on a wide variety of subjects including, Latin, Modern Languages, Economics, Jurisprudence, and Botany. We also know that she was active outside her varied academic interests; she was a member of the literary and debating society, as well as the law society at Aberystwyth. Iris also went on to become the president of the Women’s Sectional Council and the Wales Students’ Representative Council, a precursor to the Students’ Union. After she completed her BA in July 1922, her tutors were extremely complementary in the references they gave her. One asserted that she was, “one of the best law students we have ever had in the college.”

Success and Stigma

Although she registered for courses in English law and Jurisprudence at Aberystwyth with a view to qualifying for an LLB, with these glowing references in hand, Iris also travelled to England and enrolled with the Inner Temple Inns of Court in September of 1922 (although she would not sit any examinations for the bar until 1926). She then continued to Oxford where she matriculated with the Society for Oxford Home-Students (now St Anne’s College) a year later in 1923. It was relatively common at the time for Oxford students to study for the bar concurrently with their degree, as it was believed that an Oxford degree would more than adequately prepare them for the bar exam.  Her acceptance at Oxford meant that she was exempt from her studies in Aberystwyth while she completed her new course.

Despite her academic success up to this point, Iris’s race was not entirely overlooked during her studies in Wales and in England. Her student file contains a note from the Senior Warden of her halls of residence in Aberystwyth discussing Iris’s ancestry. It assures Miss Burrows, the then Principal of the Home-Students, that Iris was “of Portuguese descent and is brownish in colour with no negroid characteristics”. She goes on to state that she “suspected … that somewhere in her ancestry there has been a South American Indian”. She finally noted that Iris was “very British in her outlook and entirely so in manner of speech.” It goes without saying that white students were unlikely to have had their ancestry discussed in such detail as part of their admission to the University, although it is not recorded whether this information was solicited by Miss Burrows, or offered unprompted as part of a general request for information on Iris’s studies at Aberystwyth.

Studies in Oxford

Because she had already completed a BA in Aberystwyth, Iris was able to matriculate at Oxford as a senior student, which meant she could complete her next course of study, a second BA, in just two years. Her academic report in her first year notes that she found it “hard to concentrate” but acknowledges that she was “fairly capable” when she did. Another note indicates that she was rather “shy,” which along with her earlier discovery of stage fright suggests that Iris’s personality outside the courtroom may have been less imposing than the skilful lawyer we see her become once she began advocating. 

Her report also tells us that she was taught by another Home-Students alumna, Dr Ivy Williams. This is significant as Ivy was the first woman to be called to the bar in England. In fact, she had done so just the year beforehand, in 1922, becoming somewhat of a media sensation, so it was likely that Iris would have heard of her new tutor’s achievements and may even have been influenced in her legal ambitions. In fact, Iris had registered with the Inner Temple Inns of Court the same year that Ivy was called to the bar there. Sadly, we have no record of any correspondence between Ivy and Iris, although we do have a note from Dr Williams to another member of staff indicating that she was writing to Iris about her work in the months before she began her studies.

Legal Ambitions

Iris completed her final exams for the BA in jurisprudence in 1925. She graduated with a third-class degree which at the time was a passing grade. Despite this it appears that Iris was very unhappy with her results as she notes in a letter to the Principal in August of that year. She wrote:

“I have gone through varied phases since I saw the results in the Papers and was much tempted at one time to throw it all up as hopeless and acknowledge myself a failure, but I feel that would disappoint my father even more than anything else, so I’m relieved to know that I can go on with the BCL and thus at least carry out his wishes.”

By all accounts, Iris’ father Manuel had been a significant influence in terms of her education and legal ambitions; it was he who had funded what would have been a very expensive education for any child, let alone an illegitimate daughter. Iris’s legitimate brother, Stanley McDonald de Freitas, had also qualified as a barrister a few years previously, in 1921, so Iris may have been determined to make both her father and brother proud when it came to her legal studies.

Despite what Iris may have considered a setback in this matter, she jumped straight into her next course of study, Oxford’s infamous BCL, a postgraduate legal qualification which had a reputation, both then and now, as being one of the most difficult courses of study one could undertake. Nevertheless, she persisted and in just one year she had obtained her BCL degree and gone on to complete all of her bar examinations. She then concluded her studies for the LLB at Aberystwyth, graduating in 1927, and finally she fulfilled the attendance and dining requirements at Inner Temple, allowing her to be called to the bar in 1929.

Return to British Guiana

Upon completing her legal education, Iris returned to the Caribbean, stopping first in Barbados to become the first woman to be called to the bar there. She then made a stop in Jamaica, before returning home to British Guiana to live with her mother. Following her call to the bar, she made her first appearance in court in November 1929, making her officially the first female lawyer in the commonwealth Caribbean. A few years later she became the first woman to advocate in a murder trial in British Guiana, sixteen years before Helena Normanton prosecuted her pioneering case in the UK. Iris was the attorney for the defence in the 1932 case and was able to see her client, Gangadeen, acquitted, winning praise from the judge for her advocacy in the case. She went on to join the civil service as a Temporary Legal Assistant within the Attorney General’s Chamber, and from April 1934 she served as the first female crown prosecutor in British Guiana.  Iris’s other career highlights included working for the Franchise Commission, the Public Service Commission, and later as the Legal Advisor to the Governor of British Guiana.

Marriage and Controversy

In 1937 Iris married fellow lawyer Alfred Casimiro Brazão, who at the time was a magistrate, but went on to become solicitor general. In a typical fashion, their marriage had little impact on his career, yet for Iris it became a point of contention as married women were only able to continue working within the civil service if granted special permission. It was such an issue that the (all male) Legislative Council of British Guiana discussed her continued employment and use of her maiden name (de Freitas) professionally in 1940. In their deliberations they mentioned Iris’ legal right to practice under her maiden name, established by Helena Normanton in 1924 in the UK. Thankfully Iris was defended in the matter by the then Attorney General and subsequently continued to serve as Clerk to the Attorney General under her maiden name until 1953.

Death and Legacy

Her break from work in 1953 was due to the tragic death of her husband while he was away on business in England. She had lost her father 8 years previously in 1945, but Alfred’s death left Iris distraught and she went to stay with family friends for months afterwards to recover.

She did eventually return to work (opting now to use her married name, Brazão, perhaps in memory of Alfred) however, only a few years later, in 1957, the retirement age for those in the civil service in British Guiana was set as 55. Iris who would have been over 60 at the time would have likely been asked to retire. Despite her retirement, Iris still continued to influence the future of British Guiana. It was at this point that she spent time as part of the Public Service Commission making recommendations on the appointment and training of new staff in the civil service in British Guiana. In the run-up to independence there was a move towards employing more Guyanese staff in key posts and Iris would have played a significant role in ensuring this was the case.After ending her time on the Commission, it is said that Iris liked to garden and volunteer for local institutions such as the public library and the Red Cross. She likely also spent time with her mother, who reached the impressive age of 103 before passing away sometime around 1978. After a peaceful retirement of over 30 years, Iris also died at the age of 92 in 1989.

Although her family and community in Guyana remembered and honoured her after her death, elsewhere Iris’s incredible story was forgotten over the years. Thankfully the chance discovery of a postcard with her photograph by Aberystwyth University back in 2015, as well as the work of historian Dr Joanne Collins-Gonsalves who published a comprehensive biography on Iris last year, has brought Iris’s achievements rightfully back into the limelight.

This article was written by Alice Shepherd (Library Assistant).

Sources and Further Reading

• Collins-Gonsalves, Joanne, Iris de Freitas : Legal Luminary and Trailblazer , Atlantic Academic Publishing, 2023
• Iris de Freitas Brazao ,  Women of West Wales
• Iris de Freitas Brazao , Black History Wales Resources
• Aberystwyth University honours first female lawyer in the Caribbean , Aberystwyth University (posted 7th March 2016)
• Iris de Freitas – an amazing lady , Family de Freitas
• Caribbean Court of Justice, Pioneering Caribbean Women Jurists “The Early Pioneers” , YouTube (posted 20th December 2021)

Smartwatches and Atrial Fibrillation: What Works and What Needs Improvement?

May 29, 2024   |   Kevin Buda, DO

Expert Analysis

Quick Takes

• Clinicians will increasingly encounter heart rhythm data generated from consumer-grade devices.
• Consumer-grade smartphone-paired devices and smartwatches have very high sensitivity and specificity for atrial fibrillation.
• The specificity for arrhythmias with regular R-R intervals is very poor.

As the availability of smartphone-paired devices and smartwatches increases, clinicians will increasingly encounter data generated from consumer-grade devices. This expert analysis reviews several common consumer-grade devices, their specificity for detecting atrial fibrillation (AF), and the limitations of their use.

Most consumer-grade devices for detecting arrhythmias use photoplethysmography (PPG). This technology measures volumetric changes in blood flow on the basis of the intensity of reflected light measured from the skin's surface. This signal generates peaks proportional to pulsatile blood flow, with the peak-to-peak interval proportional to the R-R interval. Given this method's ease of detecting irregularity, PPG technology has primarily been validated for detecting AF.

The broadened availability of consumer-grade devices may increase the detection of AF in the subclinical phase. With stroke as the initial manifestation of AF in almost one-quarter of cases, early AF detection may help relieve its burden as a leading cause of disability in the United States. 1

The Accuracy

• Apple Watch. The Apple Watch (Apple Inc., Cupertino, California) monitors heart rate and rhythm using PPG. Newer models can also record an on-demand single-lead electrocardiogram (ECG). The Apple Heart Study investigators enrolled >400,000 participants without AF. People who received an irregular pulse notification had telemedicine visits with a clinician and received an ambulatory ECG monitor. Of the 2,064 patients with irregular pulse notifications, the positive predictive value (PPV) for AF was 84%. 2 Notably, Apple recently received a cease-and-desist order on some Apple Watches after the United States International Trade Commission (USITC) ruled that Apple Watch technology infringes on oxygen saturation patents held by Masimo Corporation (Irvine, California). The cease-and-desist order on relevant Apple Watches is scheduled to take effect on December 26. This order may significantly reduce the number of Apple Watches that are available for purchase until patent issues have been resolved.
• Kardiamobile. Kardiamobile (AliveCor, Mountain View, California) is a small handheld device that can provide a 30-sec single-lead ECG. One study included monitoring participants three times daily and whenever they felt palpitations, with findings of a higher rate of AF detection with the Kardiamobile device than with 24-hour ECGs (9.4% vs. 2%). 3 In another study, >1,000 patients without a history of AF were randomized to standard care or twice-weekly monitoring with Kardiamobile, with findings of a 3.8% detection rate for AF in the Kardiamobile arm compared with <1% in the standard-care arm. 4
• Fitbit. Fitbit (Google, Mountain View, California) is a wrist-worn device with PPG technology with 37 million monthly users as of 2022. 5 Similar to the Apple Watch, some newer models also incorporate the ability to perform a single-lead ECG. The Fitbit Heart Study had a similar design to the Apple Heart Study; >400,000 participants enrolled. Routine ambulatory ECG monitoring occurred in patients with irregular rhythm notifications. Among 1,057 participants with an irregular heart rate notification and an analyzable confirmatory ambulatory ECG, the PPV of irregular rhythms for AF when using consumer-grade screening with reflex to medical-grade confirmation was 98.2%. 6

Overall Efficacy

The findings of two meta-analyses included high specificity (94%) and sensitivity (96%) for AF detection with smartphones and noninferiority of smartwatches compared with medical-grade devices. 7,8

Benefits Compared With Medical-Grade Monitoring

• They are more widely available. 4
• They do not require a prescription.
• They can detect arrhythmias independently of ECG checks when the patient is free of symptoms.
• They have very high sensitivity and specificity for detecting AF. 7,8
• They can help monitor patients with established asymptomatic AF to assess AF rate and burden.

Limitations Compared With Medical-Grade Devices

• They are not worn continuously and need to be removed for charging. Therefore, their sensitivity for infrequent paroxysmal arrhythmias is lower.
• The specificity for arrhythmias with regular R-R intervals is very poor. 9
• Monitoring in patients with a low pretest probability of arrhythmias increases the false-positive rate.
• There are no guideline recommendations on what to do with information from consumer-grade devices.
• The large volume of data obtained from consumer-grade devices may further contribute to an already strained clinician workforce.

Future Directions

Given the higher false-positive rate in patients with a low pretest probability of AF, future studies need to determine the patients most likely to benefit from ambulatory monitoring. Further, it is unknown whether increased AF detection on consumer-grade heart rhythm monitoring increases appropriate anticoagulation prescription or lowers cardioembolic stroke risk.

The ongoing Heartline Study will assess the impact of AF detection with the Apple Watch on clinical outcomes. The primary endpoint is the time from randomization to the detection of AF. Secondary endpoints include health resource utilization, cost-effectiveness, and a composite including stroke, heart failure hospitalization, and all-cause death. 10

• Freedman B, Potpara TS, Lip GYH. Stroke prevention in atrial fibrillation. Lancet 2016;388:806-17.
• Perez MV, Mahaffey KW, Hedlin H, et al.; Apple Heart Study Investigators. Large-scale assessment of a smartwatch to identify atrial fibrillation. N Engl J Med 2019;381:1909-17.
• Koh KT, Law WC, Zaw WM, et al. Smartphone electrocardiogram for detecting atrial fibrillation after a cerebral ischaemic event: a multicentre randomized controlled trial. Europace 2021;23:1016-23.
• Halcox JPJ, Wareham K, Cardew A, et al. Assessment of remote heart rhythm sampling using the AliveCor heart monitor to screen for atrial fibrillation: the REHEARSE-AF study. Circulation 2017;136:1784-94.
• Statista. Number of active users of Fitbit from 2012 to 2022 (in millions) (Statista website). 2023. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/472600/fitbit-active-users/ . Accessed 05/15/2024.
• Lubitz SA, Faranesh AZ, Selvaggi C, et al. Detection of atrial fibrillation in a large population using wearable devices: the Fitbit Heart Study. Circulation 2022;146:1415-24.
• Prasitlumkum N, Cheungpasitporn W, Chokesuwattanaskul A, et al. Diagnostic accuracy of smart gadgets/wearable devices in detecting atrial fibrillation: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Arch Cardiovasc Dis 2021;114:4-16.
• Elbey MA, Young D, Kanuri SH, et al. Diagnostic utility of smartwatch technology for atrial fibrillation detection - a systematic analysis. J Atr Fibrillation 2021;13:[ePub ahead of print].
• Rajakariar K, Koshy AN, Sajeev JK, Nair S, Roberts L, Teh AW. Modified positioning of a smartphone based single-lead electrocardiogram device improves detection of atrial flutter. J Electrocardiol 2018;51:884-8.
• Gibson CM, Steinhubl S, Lakkireddy D, et al.; Heartline Steering Committee. Does early detection of atrial fibrillation reduce the risk of thromboembolic events? Rationale and design of the Heartline study. Am Heart J 2023;259:30-41.

Clinical Topics: Arrhythmias and Clinical EP, Atrial Fibrillation/Supraventricular Arrhythmias

Keywords: Atrial Fibrillation, Wearable Electronic Devices

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