You Have to Talk to the Librarian? Using Required Librarian Consultations to Identify Skills Gaps in Community College Students

Abstract

Community college libraries face unique challenges with student engagement. Underprepared and underserved students may be unfamiliar with the concept of scholarly research and many are never on the physical campus. OCCC librarians collaborated with sociology faculty to improve research skills by incorporating required individual interactions with librarians into a scaffolded research project teaching students how to locate, read, interpret, and analyze advanced scholarly literature. Together, faculty and librarians developed a rubric for identifying credible sources, piloted an assignment, and deployed the revised assignment in the Fall 2025 semester to over 740 students across 27 in person, online, and dual-credit/concurrent Intro to Sociology sections. This presentation details the cross-disciplinary benefits of collaboration, practical considerations for scaling mandatory library contacts in coursework, preliminary engagement and outcomes data for the students involved, and the ways OCCC's librarians are using data from these student contacts to identify skills gaps that can inform future library programming.