id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentence	flesch	summary	cache	txt
crl-16503	Melançon, Jérôme; Goebel, Nancy	Personal Librarian for Aboriginal Students: A Programmatic Assessment	2016-03-01	13	.pdf	application/pdf	7917	258	38	Introduction to Personal Librarian for Aboriginal Students (PLAS) There are many initiatives related to increasing the success and engagement of Ab- original students at the University of Alberta campuses in the spirit of reconciliation as outlined in the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.1 In response to the notion that undergraduate students often find the campus library and the research process intimidating, the PLAS program aims to address the way in which anxiety related to library use may act as a barrier to the success and engagement of Aboriginal students.2 Indeed, past interactions between the members of the program team and Aboriginal students have provided anecdotal evidence of library anxiety that was constant across students and across their interactions with team members, clearly echoing the findings in the limited literature on the needs of Indigenous peoples to- ward libraries.3 A program team was created to manage the operational and research aspects of the PLAS program. What is more, following Jiao and Onwuegbuzie’s recommendations, hiring Aboriginal staff in the library (even if through student positions) might also further alleviate student library anxiety and, if librarians, able to transform the libraries to make them more relevant.31 There are a number of ways in which the PLAS program contributed to the univer- sity as well as the university constituencies’ understanding of the value of the library.	cache/crl-16503.pdf	txt/crl-16503.txt