Book Reviews

Students Lead the Library: The Importance of Student Contributions to the Academic Library. Sara Arnold-Garza and Carissa Tomlinson, eds. Chicago: Association of College & Research Libraries, 2017. 322p. $62.00 (ISBN 978-0-8389-8867-1). LC 2016-055675.

When trying to inspire students to engage with the library, a book titled Students Lead the Library turns out to be an excellent way to get their attention. Displaying this title while promoting a student advisory board last fall had the surprising effect of immediately drawing students in, as they expressed their pleasant surprise at learning that they could offer significant contributions to their college or university library. For academic librarians, of course, this is less of a surprise, since, as the editors state in the very first sentence of the book: “[Academic librarians] are driven by the belief that student scholars are at the heart of the academic library.” Yet even the most student-focused librarians may find themselves astonished by the diverse selection of student leadership roles represented in this collection of case studies.

Students Lead the Library’s sixteen chapters are arranged into five sections, each representing a different way that students can lead: as employees, as curators, as ambassadors, as library leaders, and as library designers, with one slightly off-theme section in the middle focused on “library as client” (that is, as the beneficiary of student projects). The introduction by editors Sara Arnold-Garza and Carissa Tomlinson of Towson University, whose A-LIST Program features in chapter 2, provides a very readable summary of the context and theory behind their choice of topic, followed by a useful breakdown of the benefits of student leadership for both students and libraries, and how each is represented by the case studies offered therein. For students, the editors highlight leadership development, student engagement, experiential learning, and peer learning as takeaway benefits; for libraries, they speak to participatory design, transformation of core functions, and promotion of the value of libraries, particularly in terms of ACRL’s Value of Academic Libraries Initiative, as areas where libraries might benefit from student contributions.

One of the most useful features of this collection is the sheer variety of case studies; this is not a title where readers will find sixteen variations on the same narrow theme. The case studies presented run the gamut from student employee/peer research assistance programs, to student social media representatives, advisory boards, focus groups and student-library project partnerships. Every imaginable form of student-library collaboration is represented.

Due to the number of chapters, there is not enough space to adequately represent them all in this review; but some notable chapters include: the “Leave Your Legacy” project at Emporia State University, encouraging students to donate materials to university archives (chapter 6); a peer ambassador program for international students at McGill University (chapter 10); the Design-Model-Build project at University of Utah, which offered architecture students the opportunity to design a library patio renovation (chapter 11); and, of course, Towson’s own A-LIST program, through which students take on a range of self-chosen and -directed projects (chapter 2).

Stylistically, the chapters very much stand on their own, which can somewhat disrupt the flow of a cover-to-cover read-through but makes for a more interesting resource overall. Each chapter includes notes and references, though some chapters reference more extensively than others, depending on the nature of the content and whether the author(s) chose to include a literature review. Illustrations are included, thoughtfully and generally only when necessary to convey the accompanying message—social media posts, photographs of event setups, before/after shots of renovated spaces, and the like. Librarians hoping to initiate student leadership at their own institutions will be happy to find that multiple chapters include appendices containing useful resources such as report templates, policy documents, and training program outlines. Also of note in this vein: most chapters are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-ShareAlike-4.0 license, meaning that many of these materials can easily be adapted for the reader’s individual institution. The main disappointment is that this volume lacks an index, which would have been a valuable navigation tool given the extent of the book and the variety of examples included (and especially given that some of the described programs incorporate multiple kinds of engagement activities). There are, additionally, a few places where this title would have benefited from closer typographical editing. Still, there is nothing to detract significantly from the content, and the volume is still fairly navigable using the table of contents.

Upon first read, the book’s subtitle, The Importance of Student Contributions to the Academic Library, seemed a bit of a misnomer—on its surface, this work is more a collection of case studies than a focused argument for the importance of student leadership. However, looking back over the volume, it’s safe to say that Arnold-Garza and Tomlinson did, in fact, subtly accomplish what their subtitle promised. There could be few stronger arguments for student leadership in the library than the breadth of successful and varied case studies compiled in this volume. This is a collection worth examining for any academic librarians interested in or engaged with the work of increasing student leadership in their libraries—as well as an accessible inspiration piece for their students.—Jennifer L.A. Whelan, College of the Holy Cross