Students from The Park School of Buffalo recently visited Daemen College’s Research and Information Commons (RIC) to learn about and conduct college-level library research for school thesis projects.
As part of a Daemen-Park School information literacy collaboration, nearly 30 students were on campus on May 8 to tour the RIC and participate in an orientation on the library’s resources, which they then used to conduct research for senior thesis projects. The day concluded with lunch in The Den.
“It is important for students to be exposed to a college library and to understand how it differs from a high school library to help gain a better understanding of college-level research,” said Leslie Occhiuto, Park’s head librarian.
Started in 2009, the annual visit to Daemen’s RIC is an effort of the Western New York Library Resources Council’s High School to College initiative to help bridge the information literacy gap between a student’s senior year of high school and their first year of college.
“A fundamental activity of the committee has been to foster partnerships between area high schools and colleges,” said Andrea Sullivan, Daemen’s head of reference and library instruction, who founded the High School to College initiative. “Visits like the ones hosted by Daemen give students the opportunity to build on their high school research experiences and to develop library research skills that will be valuable to them in college.”