The process of determining whether a source of information is relevant is multidimensional, dynamic, and subjective. This essay puts information science scholarship on relevance, including the process and nature of making relevance judgments, in conversation with models of teaching and learning information literacy. Teaching librarians are…

Commissioned by the Coalition for Networked Information, this report examines the role of research universities in addressing complex societal challenges. It focuses on climate change, which is best characterized as a "wicked" problem. Such problems are difficult to define and lack clear solutions in part because they involve multiple…

In their Top Trends of 2012, the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) named data curation as one of the issues to watch in academic libraries in the near future (ACRL, 2012, p. 312). Data curation can be summarized as "the active and ongoing management of data through its life cycle of interest and usefulness to scholarship,…

Abortion is a highly-charged, emotional topic which often appears in the news, particularly during the confirmation process for a Supreme Court nominee. Community College students continue to ask reference librarians for print resources dealing with this controversial issue. Often we turn to the reliable series "Current Controversies," "At Issue,"…

From popular movies to New York Times bestsellers, organic food is widely acknowledged to be of growing importance. Many community college students are asking: How is organic food different from everything else in the grocery store? What impact does farming have on the environment? How safe is our food? A survey of reference works introduces…

Extensive engagement with current academic sources is expected of all psychology undergraduates. Thirty-eight undergraduate psychology students took part in a series of focus group discussions of their information-searching experiences and skills. The majority of students had not been required to engage with any form of information searching while…

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to identify and evaluate the collections within digital libraries and repositories in India available in the public domain. Design/methodology/approach: The digital libraries and repositories were identified through a study of the literature, as well as internet searching and browsing. The resulting digital…

The four basic criteria for the selection of library materials--quality, library relevancy, aesthetic and technical aspects, and cost--remain the same in the electronic era of information. What they mean and how they are used has changed. But even quality and cost, the two most controversial criteria, carry great importance for the responsible…

With Internet usage in the United States at an all-time high, information technology use in education has continued to increase. Research has shown that many students are utilizing these materials to search out information and assist with completing class assignments. Many college students have described the Internet as a functional tool that…

Reference librarians can offer much assistance for research on autobiographical accounts of the Holocaust, working in concert with faculty. This article reviews the state of Holocaust education in general, an academic reference department's role in student projects, and an overview of the wide variety of autobiographies that exist. (Author/AEF)

Paul Ricoeur's narrative theory, when combined with the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu, fosters a fresh perspective on the debate about the language of business and its influence in librarianship. It is suggested that narratives about readers hold promise because they capture the active nature of reading. (Author)

Based on Bernhard Fabian's "Buch, Bibliothek, und geisteswissenschaftliche Forschung (The Book, the Library, and Humanistic Research)," this study is a commentary on the relationship between library and user. Discussing the characteristics and requirements of research in the humanities, it stresses the interrelationship between…

Availability in electronic format of scholarly and scientific literatures and other forms of information has altered challenges faced by library collection managers. Drawing on ideas of the multi-library consortia, which have grown up partly in response to the advent of electronic resources, librarians have devised new criteria and means of…

Three attempts at consensus lists of evaluation criteria for the Web are compared with reviews in "Choice" magazine. There is little agreement on the most important/appropriate criteria for a Web site's value, and few of the criteria appear in the sample reviews, suggesting a continued lack of consensus. The extreme rapidity of change in the Web…

This study explores the concept and functions of collection from the perspective of the user. In-depth interviews with ten professors from a social science discipline and a natural science department provided descriptions of their information seeking involving material sources and their perceptions of the library collection. Participants used the…