Strategic alliances: The library as a partner for student success

The University of Mississippi Libraries (UML) has a longstanding partnership with campus units, such as The Center for Student Success and the First Year Experience (CSSFYE) and The Department of Writing and Rhetoric (DWR), to embed information literacy skills into first-year courses called the First-Year Instruction Initiative (FYII) that support library's first-year student success goals. This paper describes the importance of campus partnerships to create and assess information literacy instruction goals at an R1 university. Surveys to instructors at the end of each semester provide evidence to support more synchronous instruction efforts over asynchronous efforts, despite the challenge of providing traditional instruction to a growing number of first-year courses with a shrinking library staff. This case study describes how UML has addressed these challenges and evaluated the effectiveness of these partnerships over time in regard to future FYII sessions (both synchronous and asynchronous) and embedding information literacy skills at various levels in first-year instruction. • Instructors prefer traditional, synchronous methods for library instruction in first-year courses. • University libraries struggle to meet the demands of embedding into expanding first-year courses. • Library partnerships with campus student success units promotes strategic planning goals.