National statistics indicate that academic libraries are experiencing declines in reference transactions, but the references services in some libraries continue to thrive. While many studies explore reasons that students do not seek assistance from librarians, there is limited research explaining why students do ask for help. The authors conducted a study to answer two questions: (1) How do undergraduate students look for information? (2) What prompted the students to seek out help from a librarian? To answer these questions, the authors conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with undergraduate students who had received reference assistance. An important theme that emerged from the interviews was students’ preferences to search independently without assistance. Despite this “do-it-yourself” mentality, students aware of library research consultation services still continue to seek out assistance for librarians when stressful and time-consuming research questions arise. The findings from this study will help librarians better market their research services and understand how students perceive the help-seeking process.

Many librarians support faculty with the publishing process, which includes journal selection and evaluating the impact of their scholarly output. While large universities have the resources for entire departments devoted to bibliometrics, the authors of this article give strategies for faculty publishing support at a smaller liberal arts university. The authors created a LibGuide with publishing resources and presented the initiative to several academic divisions. Faculty were surveyed, and the results indicated that the majority of respondents were interested in assessing journal quality and viewed the library as a resource for help with the publishing process.

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