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Introduction
As have most other academic libraries, Santa Clara University, a four-year private Jesuit institution, has developed a solid information literacy program targeting entering freshmen. Almost all first-year students attend one or more library instruction sessions in conjunction with their freshman writing course. Transfer students, who arrive as sophomores, juniors or seniors and who may not have participated in information literacy instruction at their previous institutions, are at risk of falling through the cracks. Some may encounter a librarian in one of their upper-division courses, but many are left to fend for themselves when coursework requires research and/or use of library services. Because transfer students often have trouble adjusting to a new institution, both socially and academically (Moore and Wood, 2015; Owens, 2010), this has been an ongoing concern for librarians at Santa Clara University. We have reached out to transfer students in a number of ways: by attending their orientations, distributing library handouts and creating customized online guides. However, these efforts pale in comparison to all the support we provide to first-year students. We explored different possibilities to remediate the situation and decided that the personal librarian (PL) model was most promising to meet the needs of transfer students. The basic concept of a PL program is the personal connection established between a librarian and a student. We chose to design a boutique program based on the perceived needs of the target population. This paper discusses the planning, implementation and preliminary assessment of a PL program for transfer students. It highlights best practices to ensure the success and sustainability of such a program, emphasizes the importance of collaboration with other campus units and explores possible applications for other underserved student populations.
Literature review
The following literature review highlights the diversity of PL programs that have been implemented by academic libraries, especially in terms of program goals and target populations. It also looks at selected studies on the experiences of transfer students and how academic libraries respond to their specific needs.
Personal librarian programs
The concept of a PL is nothing new. As early as 1984, Sam Houston State University began offering a "one-to-one" program, matching librarians to graduate students engaged in research activities with the goal of providing a more "humane experience" and a...