Academic and research libraries are undergoing a profound transformation, shaped by technological advancements, shifting societal dynamics, and evolving institutional priorities. This essay examines how these forces are driving libraries to evolve into specialized and distinct models, shaping their future and drawing parallels to the Cambrian…

Even as librarians have spent the past twenty years documenting the rich world of scholarly communication beyond the catalog, repositories and catalogs too often remain completely siloed from each other. Current practices and tools to unite the two focus entirely on matching names, an imprecise method requiring substantial time spent on review.…

The purpose of this study is to learn more about virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) practices at the United States' top one hundred university libraries, as well as how they are engaging with the metaverse. We conducted qualitative and descriptive analysis on the websites of the top one hundred university libraries in the United…

In this chapter, we explore the organizational units, projects, and support that exist for digital literacy within the Vanderbilt University Library system. We frame the chapter chronologically, starting with the efforts of the past, then moving toward the present efforts, and concluding with where future efforts are going.

This paper examines the impact of process mapping on the management of change in an academic library in a UK higher education institution. Book ordering has been highlighted by a group of subject librarians as being time-consuming and inefficient, detracting from their ability to respond to new challenges and opportunities. An action research…

Library staff developed a project to reclassify the Curriculum Materials Collection of a specialty library on the campus of a regional comprehensive university. Materials were reclassified from a custom classification system derived from those developed by Lois Belfield Watt in 1962 and Harlan Johnson in 1973, to the Dewey Decimal Classification.…

Over the past twenty-five years, many academic libraries have shifted from print to digital collections. One consequence of this change has been the increased use of a library's website to access books, journals, and databases in a digital format. Thus, library space, once used to house print material, is now available for other purposes, creating…

This study investigates staffing competencies and collaboration for electronic resource management (ERM) in public and private university libraries in Ghana. Interviews were conducted with twenty-four library staff from two public and two private universities and three consortium executives. The findings revealed similarities and differences in…

A growing number of studies have reported that using open educational resources benefits students, but few studies have investigated academic impacts of adopting library-sourced eBooks as the course textbook. This mixed-methods study utilizes the Open Education Group's COUP Framework (Cost, Outcomes, Usage, Perceptions), which has previously been…

This case study looks at the work to develop initiatives to diversify Warwick University Library's collections, spaces and services, carried out in conjunction with our key student partners, Warwick's Library Associates. It explores the origins of the voluntary Library Associates scheme, with an emphasis on working in true partnership with…

Academic libraries are experiencing drastic changes due to unprecedented advancements in technology. This advancement has caused changes in users' information-seeking behavior, increased information competitors, and easy access and availability to free information on the internet. It is unfortunate that all this is happening amidst the dwindling…

This research brief describes recent methodological initiatives with the Public Libraries Survey. It describes how starting with the 2022 data, Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) updated geographic identifiers to better align Census Bureau geography types with the library's legal service area, with the goal of enabling data users to…

Eleven scholarly papers and six abstracts comprise the content of the twenty-fourth annual Brick & Click Libraries Conference, held annually at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Missouri. The 2024 paper and abstract titles include:(1) Love it or Leery? Rapid AI Aided Instructional Design for Library Learning (Sean Cordes); (2)…

This article provides an account of the making of KBLab, the data lab at the National Library of Sweden (KB). The first part discusses the work involved in establishing a lab as both a physical and a digital site for researchers to use digital collections at previously unimaginable scales. The second part explains how the lab has deployed the…

This case study explores the transformation of study room reservations at the Oklahoma State University (OSU) Libraries. Initially reliant on manual methods, the library transitioned to vendor-supported software and would later develop a custom, open source user interface (UI) to streamline booking efficiency. These improvements help demonstrate…