Angie Beiriger and her team were honored for their efforts to re-welcome students to the library.
By Cara Nixon
May 12, 2025
Closures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and seismic upgrades caused a period of disconnect between students and the ÈËÆÞÓÕ»ó library. First-years didn’t get to know the library as well; seniors went without thesis desks; and many missed what they considered their third space.
Director of Research Services Angie Beiriger and her team worked to rebuild that bridge between students and library culture, and, recently, Angie was lauded for this work, named a 2024–25 recipient of the Association of College and Research Libraries Oregon Award for Excellence.
Angie won the award for her project, Getting Students Back into the Library: Management and Advocacy for Increased Outreach and Engagement to Students, which she says was more of a vision. After the closures from 2020–23, she and her team discussed at length what getting students back to the library could look like. They considered: “How do we make this library relevant and meaningful for students?”
What followed was a stream of new, creative outreach and event planning. Angie helped with the back end—advocating for her team and creating space within their jobs to achieve their engagement goals while maintaining a manageable workload.
Their first big outreach event was the reopening party in March 2023. Around 550 people came to celebrate the reopening of the south wing of the library, exploring the newly renovated areas, personalizing their own cups for a custom soda bar, and connecting with one another in a beloved space. “It was just really fun, and I think really cathartic, for people to just come into the library and be loud and eat some empanadas and be present in a group space,” Angie recalls.
That event kicked off a lot of other outreach: zine programming, bibliotherapy events, and pop-in gatherings for first-years to the theme of Pop-Tarts, PopRocks, and more, led by Angie’s team: Humanities Librarian Janet Calderon, Performing Arts Librarian Caleah James, Science Librarian Carly Lamphere, Social Sciences & Zine Librarian Ann Matsushima Chiu, and Data & Digital Scholarship Librarian Jess Yao.
All of that work paid off. In 2023–24, library visits were up 29% from 2022–23, and the library had the highest “gate count” since 2015–16.
When Angie saw the email from the ACRL about winning the Award for Excellence, she knew it had been her team who nominated her. “It's really great to win, and it's a cool award,” she says. “But it’s extra meaningful because it was my team, the folks that I supervise and work with every day, that nominated me—that was really sweet.”
Now that engagement is up, Angie and her team want to know how students are using the library to understand what makes it valuable to them. Angie says they’re curious about how they can do better, so they can take next steps to improving the library even further.
“All of our work is centered around students, and our reason to be in the library is connecting with students,” Angie says.