Introduction

In the summer of 2016, we created a Student Success Collection (SSC) at the University of Southern Mississippi's main library in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, USA. This niche collection is comprised of over 300 titles related to student success, broadly defined, and is displayed in the Cook Library lobby adjacent to the campus Starbucks coffee shop. Items in the SSC encompass a variety of topics, such as study skills, writing manuals and time management, as well as career and vocational development, personal growth and development, health and wellbeing and other issues related to student life. Also included are support materials for instructors, covering topics from excellence in teaching to professional growth. Quality instruction is, after all, a component of student success.

We were inspired to create our Student Success Collection in part by an article by Ke, Greive and Vaughn (2015) discussing a collection of books on developing academic skills that were relocated to the University of Houston library's busy ground floor, thereby increasing their visibility. We were also motivated by our university's recent Student Success Initiative and, in our effort to identify ways in which Cook Library could play a part in this push, we recalled book displays we had previously pulled together on topics related to some aspects of student success. Our general collection included many titles related to student success, but these were spread out all throughout the stacks according to the Library of Congress Classification System. We had given out a printed bibliography of these items at student orientations and other outreach events. When our institution's president started a book club in the summer of 2015, we created a tailored list of leadership and academic success items in support of it. These projects served as the springboard for our permanent SSC.

This article describes the background to this initiative; examines practical aspects such as the location of the collection, stock selection and promotion; and finally outlines some possible future directions

Background

Part of being a successful student is dependent on maintaining a healthy body and mind amidst a variety of different stressors. For the purposes of creating this collection, we chose to define health and wellness in a broad way and have selected material aimed at improving all aspects of students’ lives.