In the week before Labor Day, the University of Minnesota Libraries helped welcome roughly 7,300 first-year students to the Twin Cities campus, the largest incoming class in campus history.

During Welcome Week, students explored the East Bank and West Bank, playing spike ball, scaling the climbing wall, and seeing what clubs and extracurriculars the University offers. But it was also an opportunity for incoming students to prepare for the fall semester and learn how the Libraries can help them throughout their academic careers.

“Welcome Week is a great chance for us to introduce the Libraries and all of our services to the students,” said Kate Peterson, the undergraduate services librarian. “We want to be sure they know about our study spaces, our research tools on our website, our archives, our fun reading collections, and so much more.”

The Libraries introduced new students to the Makerspaces in Walter Library and the Health Sciences Library, free-to-use areas equipped with supplies, 3D printers, sewing machines, laser cutters, and hand tools, as well as the Toaster Innovation Hub and the Virtual Reality Studio.

“I’m so excited about The Toaster,” said Xanthea-Simon Carlson, a first-year mathematics major and linguistics minor. “I got some free clothes on Tuesday and some of them had tears. So I’m excited to alter them and embellish them.”

And the Libraries are, of course, the perfect place for studying. All across campus, students can find reservable study rooms, open study spaces, and research collaborative studios. And they might also find the UMN Book Club, which meets monthly in the Wilson Collaboration Studio.

Michon Harju, a psychology major and neuroscience minor from Duluth, Minnesota, loved meeting fellow freshmen during Welcome Week and seeing all the different student organizations. She wants to open her own clinic or become a research psychologist after graduation, so she’s already planning to spend lots of hours in the Libraries studying.

“The Libraries look really, really beautiful and look like they have a lot of good study spaces. Especially this one, Walter looks amazing,” she said.

While students may not need to book sessions with the Peer Research Consultants or the peer tutoring program during the first few weeks of the semester, the Libraries is here to help with all their future research assignments. Students can even find free, online textbooks at the Libraries, as well as journal articles, peer-reviewed sources, open educational resources, courseware, and more.

And the Libraries hires hundreds of students each semester, Peterson said.

“We have students that work on our desks and shelve books, but we also have students work in those Makerspaces, work with tools like video production, or even work in our Archives and Special Collections,” she said.