The Long and Winding Road: Planning a Successful Library Orientation for Graduate Students

All new university students would benefit from an orientation focusing on library resources, which should look different for undergraduate and graduate students. But finding a place for incoming graduate student library orientations within the larger campus landscape can be challenging for librarians. Contributing to this struggle is that there is frequently an overemphasis on undergraduate orientations, with the misconception that graduate students have less need for orientations. This article will review how other institutions approach their graduate student orientations and share how ours have developed over five years and will continue to do so as the needs of the library and our graduate programs evolve.