This 16th annual report highlights up-to-date information on the programs supported through the Chancellor's Office Telecommunications and Technology Infrastructure Program (TTIP). To summarize 2012-13, one would describe it as a year of planning and preparation. The system-wide budget cuts of the past few years, reports of impacted classes, staff…

A survey of community college librarians in California reveals that the nature of reference service required of them, limitations on budget, staffing, technical support, resources, decision-making ability, and professional development opportunities, affect their professional attitudes. Librarians see reference service as primarily a teaching role.…

When Bruce Miller took up the position of head librarian at the University of California, Merced in 2001, the plan for the new library was to use the University of California (UC) system's rich base of support as a launching pad for something great and extraordinary: a model academic research library for the twenty-first century. This article…

The purpose of this project was to investigate how students' search strategies changed over the course of a semester-long information literacy class. Data collection included four different paper questionnaires corresponding to course content in the spring 2008 semester. Seventy-seven participants completed the questionnaires and course work in…

Introduction: We explore the use of a psychometric model for locally-relevant, information literacy assessment, using an online tool for standardised assessment of student learning during discipline-based library instruction sessions. Method: A quantitative approach to data collection and analysis was used, employing standardised multiple-choice…

Research has shown that formative assessment is a key ingredient in raising student achievement. The goal of formative assessment is not to grade students, but to pinpoint where they are having trouble and then to take appropriate instructional action. In a review of 250 studies, Black and Wiliam found that formative assessments had a more…

Librarians often cringe when they hear the word copyright, when it is combined with electronic reserves the immediate impulse is to run away as far and as fast as possible. This paper presents the process used by the Armacost Library staff at the University of Redlands to develop and implement a copyright policy for the electronic reserve…

The Association of Research Libraries E-Science Working Group developed a survey to "build an understanding of how libraries can contribute to e-science activities in their institution" and "identify organizations and institutions that have similar interests in e-science to leverage research library interests." The August 2009…

Colleges and universities have been among the leaders nationwide in adopting green initiatives, partly due to their demographics, but also because they are facing their own budget pressures. Virtualization has become the poster child of many schools' efforts, because it provides significant bang for the buck. However, more and more higher…

This article is based on services to library users in the area of chemistry at the Science and Engineering (S&E) Library of the University of Southern California (USC), to which I applied various new technologies as outreach approaches. Various Web 2.0 technologies such as a blog, tags, YouTube, RSS feeds, Instant Messaging, online…

Just four months ago, a class of 20 first graders at Monarch Academy, a K-5 charter school in Oakland, California, couldn't operate a mouse, much less log in to and operate a digital program. By February, the kids had become capable computer users, able to tackle a range of activities and the Web and ready for the next new thing their…

This article addresses the question, "How do mothers and children in a homeless shelter interact with literacy?" We drew on the theoretical framework of social literacy practices in which cultural context is foregrounded. Data for this qualitative study included participant observation in one homeless shelter and interviews with one…

For the past several years, many have viewed wikis as useful tools for community building and collaboration. A number of free Web services such as PBwiki have claimed convenience and ease of use as part of their overall packages. A review of the literature reveals a great deal of anecdotal support for wiki use in the workplace. However, few…

Increased access to the Internet has dramatically increased the sources from which students can deliberately or accidentally copy information. This article discusses our motivation to design, implement, and deploy an Internet based plagiarism detection system, called PAIRwise, to address this growing problem. We give details as to how we detect…

This article examines the topicality of Library and Information Science (LIS) dissertations written between 1930 and 2009 at schools with American Library Association (ALA)--accredited university programs in North America. Dissertation titles and abstracts were examined for the presence of library-related keywords drawn from the core curricula of…