Søkestua - a drop-in guidance service for students and staff

Introduction In the autumn of 2017, the Medicine and Health Library at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) started a guidance service for nursing students. Here students could ask questions about literature searching, references and bibliographies and so on. The experience with this was good. Much less time was spent arranging meetings with each student, e-mail corespondence back and forth and booking meeting rooms. Methods Based on these experiences, the library decided in the autumn of 2018 to establish “Søkestua”. Søkestua – or “The Search Room” – is a permanent drop-in guidance service open to all students and also staff at NTNU and St. Olavs Hospital. Søkestua is offered once a week, every Thursday from 14-15. It takes place at the library´s seminar room which has a group table set-up. We are seven colleagues running Søkestua, 2 each week. We market Søkestua at the library desk, on library courses, to teachers and faculty, with flyers, on social media, blogposts, websites and on information screens. Results Those who use Søkestua are mostly bachelor and further education students, but other user groups are represented as well. They need help with reference styles and tools, literature searching and so on. Attendance varies greatly according to, among other things, time of the academic year. Several students come just before submitting assignments and while they are doing home exams. Some have simple and specific questions, others more comprehensive. Students tell us they are highly satisfied with Søkestua. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilZCzqfNJR8