Student employees are essential to academic libraries on college and university campuses. The employment programme at this mid-sized university library intentionally seeks to engage students in work that not only benefits the library, but also provides students the opportunity to learn and hone skills that can contribute to academic and…

Birmingham City University's Library and Learning Resources' strategic aim is to improve student satisfaction. A key element is the achievement of the Customer Excellence Standard. An important component of the standard is the mapping of services to improve quality. Library and Learning Resources has developed a methodology to map these…

We describe a three-week intensive and innovative faculty development program, necessitated by the 2020 pandemic, which was designed as a deliberative and purposeful initiative to help instructors make the rapid transition to remote teaching. The program, referred to as the Practicum on the Foundations of Teaching Online, was created as a…

Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) programs have been recognized as one of the most effective channels through which theses and dissertations can be made available to academic communities and beyond. ETD program management, however, needs to be aware of the Critical Success Factors (CSFs) throughout the process of design and development of…

The spring of 2020 surfaced unprecedented challenges, with a global pandemic and societal unrest initiated by highly publicized police killings of citizens in Minnesota, Kentucky, and elsewhere. Although for many people throughout the US and Canada, the confluence of events has brought a new level of awareness and new vocabulary for such issues as…

Purposeful assessment of space for the understanding and improvement of the academic library is a relatively new area of inquiry. This essay offers a framework to consider different factors affecting such an assessment and insights for undertaking a meaningful inquiry about the relationship of space to an academic library's evolving purpose as…

During spring quarter 2008, the Western Washington University (WWU) Libraries established an interactive bloglike environment called "14 Days to Have Your Say" with the intention of gathering new ideas and feedback about the libraries from the university community. The environment was developed as a fairly simple Drupal site. The project…

In June 2004, fourteen students graduated from the first completely online degree program at The Ohio State University--the Non-Traditional PharmD (Doctor of Pharmacy) program. The program was implemented as a response to the American Council on Pharmaceutical Education requiring this degree for entry into pharmacy practice. This article reports…

The MIT Libraries enthusiastically implemented real-time online reference service in September 2001. After 15 months, Ask Us!--Live was suspended due to ongoing software problems. This article describes the four-part assessment of the service with recommendations for the future. (Contains 6 figures and 21 notes.)

With the growth of Web 2.0 library intranets in recent years, many libraries are leaving behind legacy, first-generation intranets. As Web 2.0 intranets multiply and mature, how will traditional intranet best practices--especially in the areas of planning, implementation, and evaluation--translate into an existing Web 2.0 intranet infrastructure?…

Over the past several decades, millions of digital objects of significant scientific, economic, cultural, and historic value have been published and distributed to libraries and archives on removable media. Providing long-term access to these documents, media files, and software executables is an increasingly complex task because of dependencies…