Abstract
The data used for this study was collected from " Librarians across Institutions: Establishing Outreach Programs, " which gathered data from academic outreach librarians across the United States in order to identify factors that contribute to—and hinder—effective outreach programs. The study examines support for the most and least effective outreach programs carried out by outreach librarians in five support areas. To analyze the five support areas, the author conducted five independent-sample t-tests. The author wanted to test if the mean scores of support from librarians, staff, faculty, students, and volunteers were significantly different at a p value of less than 0.05 across the most effective versus least effective outreach programs. The target group was created by searching LinkedIn profiles for academic librarians whose job title included " outreach " or who had outreach listed in their work experience. The data analysis shows there is a difference in support levels between the most effective and least effective library outreach programs. The results also revealed there are significant statistical differences in the levels of support from librarian, staff, and students between the most and least effective programs. Results from the study confirm our understanding that outreach librarians are innovative and use communication and collaboration techniques to garner support from librarians, staff, faculty, students, and volunteers to create effective outreach programs. KEYWORDS academic libraries, outreach, outreach programs, librarians, outreach librarian O utreach librarians in academic libraries advocate engagement with students, underserved populations, and their local community as part of their mission. In planning outreach activities, outreach librarians must work within the constraints of budget and time for the success of their program objectives. Few academic institutions maintain a budget designated for outreach. A study done by Carter and Seaman (2011) revealed that 23 percent of