Library Ambassadors: Peer to Peer Advocacy

Abstract

Botho University is the largest private university in Botswana, with centers in Gaborone, Francistown and Maun. In academic institutions, promotion and marketing of library services often takes the back seat which affects library usage. As Botho University library, we initiated a project named Library Ambassadors, engaging students to market library resources while at the same time empowering them with information literacy, presentation, and communication and marketing skills. This project has been running since January 2015. Students are recruited yearly and each faculty is represented. For 2016/2017 year we have 18 library ambassadors representing the Faculty of Business, Education, Engineering and Faculty of Computing. Once library ambassadors have been recruited, they are trained by librarians to understand the library products and services. We have also partnered with Emerald Publishing to conduct trainings focusing on literature search and information retrieval. During the project, library ambassadors have been involved in peer to peer training, pop up visits, book displays as well as participating in library events such as World Book Day & Authorship Event. In summary, this project improved library usage as there has been a significant increase in library item s circulation, electronic resource usage and the number of participants in library activities.