Incorporating Branded Academic Library Programming to Promote and Showcase Campus Research and Artistic Performances

Abstract

Academic libraries play a crucial role in the scholarship cycle. In addition to serving as a traditional study space, a university's community depends on their libraries to acquire and provide access to resources to support the research and instruction interests of faculty and students. In these ways, academic libraries support the cyclical nature of scholarship by collecting resources that are themselves both the tools necessary for generating future scholarship, and the outputs of past scholarship. This article focuses on two successful library-sponsored programs at the Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University. Its Library Lecture Series, which promotes faculty research and scholarship, and its Senior Showcase, which celebrates senior undergraduates’ research, have become a part of the cyclical scholarship cycle. Library-hosted programming that draws attention to the broad array of scholarship created on university campuses offers and provides opportunities for strengthening academic libraries’ relationships with their faculty, staff, student, and community users.