Library Services Improve Academic Success

Our librarians—Professor Myra Bloom, Professor Dan Eller (now at Stanford University), Dr. Mark Hall, and Dr. Angela Sample—teamed up with Dr. Andrew Lang from the Department of Computing and Mathematics to study the improvement of undergraduate student GPA after visiting the library. After spending a little over a year writing and revising their findings, their article was accepted by the Journal of Academic Leadership on March 10, 2025 and published online on March 14, 2025.

In their article, Bloom et al. explore the value of student participation in the “spaces, resources (both physical and digital, and services” academic libraries offer. They make note of how academic libraries have become more than a place to study and are now often used for student associations and collaborative work “thereby thriving academically, mentally, and socially.”

Their research shows that visiting the library does help an undergraduate student’s GPA, although there is still room for more research.

The J. D. McKean Library is proud of the success of this article and looks forward to further library improvement to assist students in their academic success.