Communicating with and empowering international students with a library skills set

Much library research over the last decade has focused on serving this particular group of library user. The project synthesizes and supplements past recommendations with a survey of academic institutions in the Southern USA. Data were collected from 123 colleges and universities. Both librarians and international student support staff agreed that the major challenges international students face are language/communication problems, adjusting to a new educational/library system, and general culture adjustments. The paper recommends a model for library skills training for internationalstudents by weaving together ACRL’s Information Literacy Competency Standards with the communication, educational and cultural adjustments international students encounter when studying in the USA.