When Leadership Falls Short: The Crisis of Care in Library Work
Posted on in Blog Posts
International Students and Academic Libraries
Posted on November 26, 2024 in Blog Posts
Authors:
Sam Berry-Sullivan
It is a precarious time to work at an institution of higher education in the United States. Historic small colleges and universities are shuttering their doors, many never having recovered from the loss of income when student enrollment dropped off a cliff in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Administrators at small private colleges, whether for-profit or nonprofit, must get creative with the resources available to them. It is not feasible to radically lower tuition or completely revamp the student center on campuses with FTEs that barely break 3,000. One solution that my university’s past president put forth is to enroll more international students.
When I was hired in June 2021, my institution was a humble college, but in February 2022, we were granted university designation. This designation was critical because institutions with “university” in their name are far more attractive to international students than those designated as “colleges.” And it worked. According to an administrator in our international studies department, while only 28 international students enrolled for classes in 2022, fall 2024 saw 222 international students choosing to seek their advanced degrees at our freshly minted university. This academic year we are serving students from sixteen countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bermuda, Canada, Czech Republic, Ghana, Hong Kong, India, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Myanmar, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Thailand, and the United Kingdom.
But what happens to those students once they set foot on campus? How can we ensure they receive the same educational supports and services as their American classmates?
Although our population of international students increased by an astonishing 693 percent from 2022 to 2024, this increase does not seem to be reflected in the number of international students I think I see using the library. I say “think” because, in a multicultural society, until a student self-identifies as an international student, a librarian cannot know who is an international student simply by sight.
Jia He reports on her work with international students at the University of South Alabama in her paper “Diversity and Inclusion: Better Serving International Students at Academic Libraries,” which appears as a chapter in Hope and a Future: Perspectives on the Impact that Librarians and Libraries Have on Our World(paywalled), part of the series “Advances in Librarianship.” He’s essay touches on several challenges unique to international students. The first and most obvious barrier is language. The idea that international students, having successfully made it to their institution through all of the tests, transcripts, and applications that journey implies, must be near perfect in their English speaking and comprehension is a misinformed assumption.
Not only are the international students whom we have welcomed onto our campuses very much still on their journeys to full fluency in English, but students born in the United States who speak English as their first (and often only) languagethemselves often struggle with comprehending the welter of jargon that entering higher education represents. This gap in literacy has already begun to impact institutions of higher education. As more students whose education suffered during the pandemic arrive at college, we will be forced to stop bemoaning where their skills should be and start adjusting curriculum and services based on where they are. We can begin this process by designing supports and services for our international students.
He’s paper finds that outreach to the student organizations and offices that interface with international students is a powerful way to establish the library (and its librarians) as present, friendly academic supports. In their 2015 paper, “From the Ground Up: Creating a Sustainable Library Outreach Program for International Students” (paywalled), which He cites, Chris Langer and Hiromi Kubo outline a sustainable and manageable library outreach program for international students, which includes a library orientation, information literacy workshops, library tours, and training for international peer advisors (p. 52). This proactive approach cuts through cultural barriers that may exist, such as not understanding librarians as academic supports and therefore not using them in this way because librarians’ roles may be different in students’ home cultures.
A serious infraction common among international students is the mishandling of the citation/attribution process, often due to differing practices in their home countries. Specifically advertising citation style help from librarians in your institution’s international studies office or at a meeting of the international student union will make it more likely that those students feel comfortable seeking help from librarians.
Another tool librarians can employ to improve their service to international students is offering library orientation and instructional materials in a variety of languages wherever possible. He reports on the success of vernacular library instruction videos, wherein international students representing the major languages spoken agreed to help create narrations for library instruction videos. Librarians can take this idea further by requesting the assistance of an international student to live translate during library orientation, or asking a focus group of international students to help identify ways to best market and provide library services to that group. Yet another way to draw international students to the library is through multilingual popular reading collections, such as this one at Mohawk Valley Community College.
Hopefully, the suggestions outlined here can serve as a starting point for academic librarians looking to ensure inclusive library service for international students.
Want to read my references? Consult with your librarian to access those that are paywalled in your own collections!
About the author:
Sam Berry-Sullivan is a white, nonbinary, neurodivergent academic librarian who leverages their privilege and unique experience of the world to advocate for diversity and equity in librarianship, higher education, and health sciences, for which Sam is subject liaison.
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Header image is a detail of This is Harlem by Jacob Lawrence. Courtesy of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. © 2021 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. For more information, click here.