Electronic resources undergo various changes during their lifecycle from evaluation, to acquisitions, to renewal or cancelation. To keep users abreast of these changes, effective communication is necessary between the electronic resources librarian and the library team. Effective communication is equally important between the electronic resources…

In light of recent calls for decolonial approaches to Indigenous language learning, documentation, and reclamation, we describe the creation of a digital archive initiated and sustained by community collaboration. We work with members of the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes to translate and analyze Cherokee texts. Cherokee speakers…

This research seeks to find the new trends in virtual reference and online learning by looking at the impact of COVID-19 on academic libraries, and by identifying gaps in professional development for academic librarians, particularly in reference and instruction. Responses from the surveyed academic librarians indicate that many services…

Resolving user access issues is inherent in managing electronic resources in libraries. The University of Maryland University College (UMUC) Library, situated within a predominantly distance learning-centered institution, has developed a series of web-based technical help pages to facilitate resolution of typical issues reported by its…

Web 2.0 applications to library services are aimed at enhancing the provision of relevant and cost-effective information resources for quality education and research. Despite the richness of these web applications and their enormous impact on library and information services as recorded in the developed world, Nigerian academic libraries are yet…

The COVID-19 outbreak across the globe has forced educational institutions including medical schools to suspend campus learning in order to curb the spread of the virus. This has forced the teaching community to think of new avenues and alternate strategies for engaging our students. Many institutes of higher education including medical colleges…

Student workers are a well-established component of academic library operations. Recently, their traditional role has expanded to include responsibilities that were previously assigned to librarians, including in-person and virtual reference support. This trend has raised concerns about service quality and highlighted the importance of adequate…

In the 1990s, the American Physiological Society (APS), like most organizations, was exploring ways to support members and trainees via online resources and programs. Online communication was still primarily accomplished via e-mail, listserves, and websites, although discussion boards and social media were growing in popularity among researchers…

Digital learning environments are spaces in which data are shared, generated, and recorded. At the end of an online course, a rich collection of digital artifacts are left behind by the instructor and learners. Some artifacts are intentionally created learning materials and assignments, some are the products of class interaction in discussion…

This paper covers material presented at the 15th Annual Off-Campus conference (formerly known as the Off Campus Library Services Conference) in Memphis, Tennessee. During the course of this presentation, participants learned how both chat and instant messaging reference are being conducted and evaluated at a major online learning university. This…

The focus of all of this intense interchange was the shape and future of learning institutions. Our charge was to accept the challenge of an Information Age and acknowledge, at the conceptual as well as at the methodological level, the responsibilities of learning at an epistemic moment when learning itself is the most dramatic medium of that…

The ability to navigate the vast ocean of available information and perform reference services in digital environments is an essential component of the job for most of today's reference librarians, especially those working in academic libraries. Reference librarians face a challenge: they must be highly skilled at searching for, locating, and…

This article takes its outset in findings from an ongoing research project investigating the use of digital and multimodal resources in teacher education (TE) in Norway. The material studied is mandatory assignments in different courses in TE, asking how teacher students collaborate through digital media in their production of texts for learning,…

Technology has transformed libraries. There are digital libraries, electronic collections, online databases and catalogs, ebooks, downloadable books, and much more. With free technology such as social websites, newspaper collections, downloadable online calendars, clocks and sticky notes, online scheduling, online document sharing, and online…

Quora (www.quora.com) is a contemporary, web-based take on reference. Users post questions within Quora and other users answer the questions. Users can vote for and against answers (or not vote at all). It is users asking questions of friends and strangers and then sorting through the results. If the model sounds familiar, it's because it is.…