Drawing on an original methodology using citations, downloads, and survey data, this paper analyzes journal usage patterns across 28 Canadian universities. Results show that usage levels vary across disciplines and that different academic platforms varied in their importance to different institutions, with for-profit platforms generally exhibiting…

A content analysis of 62 job postings for East Asian studies librarians in the United States and Canada during 2008-2019 demonstrates that major job responsibilities have expanded to include collection development and management, reference and research assistance, instruction, liaison work, and outreach; relationship building and collaboration are…

Research data services--support offerings which enable and improve data-intensive research--have garnered sustained attention from library research support service providers for nearly two decades. Libraries have played a leading role in developing research data services, and on most university campuses they provide the largest and most diverse…

The academic library plays multiple roles in the university, making even a nuanced analysis of service numbers inadequate for assessing the complexity of the library's value and contributions to the university's mission and success. This exploratory study uses social network analysis and a unique interlibrary loan (ILL) data set to examine…

McMaster University's Health Sciences Library (HSL) began to transition to a new liaison service model in early 2018. One of its librarians sought to understand how an academic health sciences library can optimise its support for academic undergraduate programmes. This scoping review of the literature was pursued with the aim to submit an informed…

This multimethod study investigates differences in question complexity and type between live chat, email, and texting by comparing findings from user interviews and virtual reference transcripts, with the goal of better understanding how different delivery methods can meet user needs in the context of an academic library. Findings reveal…

This study employed a novel user experience method, the love/breakup letter, to evaluate the usefulness of an online information literacy (IL) tutorial for students writing assignments with research requirements. Thematic coding of the letters showed that this method elicited revealing responses from students about their confidence in doing…

We may not always like the speed of today's world, but we still need to prepare students for working in a fast-paced environment. In the library and information science (LIS) professions today, deadlines are becoming ever shorter, yet research into the effects of time pressure in LIS is scarce. This pilot project aims to develop and test a…

This compilation of articles brings together ideas on the changing roles and opportunities for academic library liaisons with faculty. Five institutions share their reorganizations and redefinitions of what it means to be a liaison in today's research library in this issue of "Research Library Issues" ("RLI"). There are many…

Library publishers have an important role in building an equitable and open scholarly publishing ecosystem. As library publishers' services mature, it is critical to understand how noncommercial journals operate and organize their daily activities to ensure the journals' success, longevity, and sustainability. To inform these efforts, the authors…

Ithaka S+R launched a project in collaboration with a cohort of libraries to identify challenges and develop strategies for streaming media acquisitions. The findings from the first part of this project--a comprehensive national survey that tracked the streaming media strategies libraries are adopting and the challenges they are facing-- was…

This article uses the theoretical perspectives of critical discourse analysis (Mayr, 2008; Fairclough, 1992) and critical pedagogy (Pagowsky & McElroy, 2016; Accardi, et al., 2010) to explore how language is a socially regulating structure used to represent and maintain power within the academic context. These perspectives are applied to two…

This article explores two considerations in the push toward joint "LAM" (Library, Archive, and Museum) programs of education and research: the organizational proximity of departments and schools of library and information studies (LIS) and museum studies (MS); and the degree to which individual scholars of LIS and MS share publishing…

This time of accentuated interdependence and acute awareness of a historical moment calls on galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAMs) to respond together and to lead forward. Memory institutions are unique trusted stewards of time. When humanity experiences a global event such as the current COVID-19 pandemic, these institutions are…

In 2021, Ithaka S+R conducted a survey designed to provide insight into the streaming media strategies libraries are adopting and the challenges they are facing. The survey tracked the vendors libraries are most commonly working with, acquisition models and licensing agreements, current and projected budgets for streaming, and the digitization of…