Dec 17, 2009 JG

This is what I have written so far for the introduction to our proposal. It is a very basic beginning. Feel free to edit and change. JG

The Reference and Instruction department at the Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery offers services for undergraduate and graduate students as well as faculty and staff at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.  At the present time, the majority of students who attend library instruction sessions are undergraduate students.  Our department wishes to reach out to graduate students at our institution in order to market different methods of instruction that may better meet their research needs.

I think we should add in some numbers about how many graduate students we currently reach. For example, out of 261 students that I taught, only 39 of them were graduate students.  Can we ask everyone in the department how many graduate students they taught this year? If we do this, we will have some data that will allow us to state a problem. If we have data that shows we teach fewer graduate students, then we can aspire to teach more, etc.

I also found this link and thought it might be helpful:
http://www.lib.jmu.edu/org/ala/tips.aspx#titles

JG

Dec 18, 2009 SQ

The following are my thoughts. I haven't found time to integrate them together. It is just the content which I think can be included and the structure to present. I also attached my writing Maybe we can integrate our writing in one word document and then attach it in this page as backup.
proposal draft
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Graduate students, as an underserved population (Sadler & Given, 2007), are supposed to receive the library services as many as undergraduate students do.

Reasons why library services for graduate students are not effective

First, in general, undergraduate students are seen as university libraries' major customers. Few library programs or services are especially designed for meeting graduate students' information needs.
Second, the group of graduate students is usually more diverse and consists of more returning students and international students, who might not be aware of the library resources and services at all.
Third, outreaching graduate students is more difficult because they are relatively scattered on campus regarding to their independent study pattern. A part of students may spend most of time working off-campus.

Reasons why it is important for graduate students to know how to use library resources and services effectively and efficiently

First of all, the majority of graduate students have teaching or research duties. They need reference materials to support their teaching or research such as books and journal articles. Being familiar with library resources and services definitely can help them to save more time on finding information.
Second, writing thesis or dissertation is required for most of the programs and some students may have chance to publish their research achievements on scholarly publications, which involves many works on managing citation and bibliography. The citation management software, citing style handbooks and some database kits are significantly helpful at this point.

The same situation also exists at University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). UMBC is No.1 among up-coming national universities honored by the U.S. News & World Report America's Best Colleges Guide, offering 77 graduate degree programs and enrolling 2923 graduate students in 2009 ( almost one fourth of the total students). Compared to these significant data, the number of graduate students the library outreached or served is very small. In 2009, "?" graduate students attended library instruction sessions or workshops, ...
Hence, we start this initiative and aim to make our library resources and service more visible and reachable for the graduate students.

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BI statistics data

UMBC facts
Students: 12,870
Graduate Students: 2,923 22.7%
Graduate Schools offer: 33 master's degree programs, 24 doctoral degree programs, 20 graduate certificate programs

January 6, 2010 JG

Here is the revised document. I have added a little and edited it in with your writing. I will add more later.

seminarProposaldraft.doc  slight revisions made 1/21/10. will add more later