This presentation will share the results of a new initiative developed by the ETD Librarian at Florida International University (FIU) to develop a personal connection between students and the ETD Librarian. The goal is threefold; to provide a personal contact and open communication channel within the library to whom students can address publishing best practices and concerns with, to better inform and engage students in the metadata process of submitting theses and dissertations, and to spur the growth of knowledge and usage of ORCID. A previous initiative that added an ORCID and a license option to the metadata fields had resulted in a growth in licensing usage but the use of ORCID continued to remain flat at approximately 30%.

A study was conducted to determine whether students understood when and why to use the ORCID and embargo options and the results showed that students did not understand the usefulness of these tools. At FIU, the ETD submission process is split into two parts with the graduate school coordinator being the main contact with students and the ETD Librarian doing the publishing in the institutional repository. Our ETD Coordinator offers workshops to help guide the students through this process, however, students have previously had no contact with the ETD Librarian. This novel approach aims to change that.