REACHING OUT TO ACADEMICS AND GRADUATE STUDENTS: COLD CALLS AND INCENTIVES AT THE SCRIPPS INSTITUTION OF OCEANOGRAPHY

Over the past few years the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) Library has experienced a drop in the library gate count, in-person visits, reference queries, and attendance at library classes. Since the librarians were convinced that there was still a need, a program was put in place to reach out to faculty and researchers (academics) by making phone calls to their offices, “cold calling”. To add to the graduate students’ attendance at library orientation classes, incentives in the form of $10 gift certificates to the coffee & snack bar adjacent to the library were offered. The new instruction & outreach librarian believed in the benefits of one-on-one instruction, so individualized consultations were offered to the graduate students with the “bribe” of a $20 gift certificate to the coffee bar for attending.

The goal of the “cold calling” program was to contact each academic, department by department, to ascertain if their informational needs were being met and if they were informed about the latest databases and electronic resources the library offered in their subject disciplines and for their specific areas of research. Several phone conversations with the faculty and researchers resulted in immediate questions and resolution of their access or searching problems on the spot. Also, individual consultations with the academics were scheduled and held in their offices to assist them with database searching, loading of specialized software, online requesting of documents, access to electronic journals, and bibliographic software program use (EndNote).

Reports on librarian time spent researching the academics before cold calling, preparation for the consultations and classes, and the amount of positive feedback from the academics and students branded this new program as a success. Revision of the program goals and plan a year after implementation, to streamline the workflow, turned this new venture into a routine service of the SIO Library.