Customized USB Flash Drives Used to Promote Library Resources and Services to First-Year Medical and Dental Students

Abstract

In line with its institution's commitment to keep new student orientation/welcome events “green,” Columbia University's Health Sciences Library (HSL) applied for a National Network of Libraries of Medicine Middle Atlantic Region (NN/LM MAR) Small Projects Award ¹ in Spring/Summer 2009 to explore paperless modes of outreach. This article describes the project that resulted from this funding, whose purpose was to determine whether customized 1 GB USB flash drives are a good vehicle for distributing library promotional materials to incoming medical and dental students. This project gave HSL librarians the opportunity to connect with students in a way that had not been done before and to consider how these new students use/view the information the library produces.

KEYWORDS:

• Data storage device
• dental students
• green marketing
• library outreach
• library resource promotion
• library resource usage
• medical students
• USB drive
• USB flash drive
• USB key
• USB memory stick
• USB thumb drive

Acknowledgments

This article was based on a poster presented by the authors at the Annual Meeting of the Medical Library Association in Washington, D.C., May 25, 2010. This project was funded by the National Library of Medicine under NLM Contract N01-LM-6-3501 with New York University Medical Center.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Konstantina Matsoukas

Konstantina Matsoukas, MLIS ([email protected]) is Head of Reference and Education Coordinator

Anca Meret

Anca Meret, MLS ([email protected]) is Reference Librarian

John T. Oliver

John T. Oliver, MLIS ([email protected]) is Reference and Instruction Librarian

Michael Purcell

Michael Purcell, MLIS ([email protected]) is Web Librarian; all at Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library of Columbia University, 701 West 168th Street, New York, NY 10032.