Technical standards are resources that are important for engineering and engineering technology students due to ABET accreditation requirements and future professional use of the documents. Previous studies have surveyed librarians at Association of Research Libraries (ARL) institutions with engineering programs and librarians at universities with…

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic brought about significant disruptions in higher education, including changes within the field of academic librarianship. This paper reports on a March 2021 survey of tenure-track faculty librarians. The purpose was to identify the challenges they faced because of the pandemic, the effect on their confidence, and…

This study documents the experience of, and identifies professional barriers for, academic librarians and archivists with invisible illnesses and/or disabilities. Results from a survey of MLIS-holding individuals in academic positions indicate that invisible illness or disability often impacts the ability to succeed at work, but many are reluctant…

This study investigates instruction librarians' potential teacher identity and the factors that may contribute to it. Responses to a survey of instruction librarians in the United States suggest that respondents see themselves as teachers and devote a significant portion of their time to teaching, though they received little pedagogy training in…

Research data services are increasingly offered by academic libraries. As a result, librarians may need to upskill to provide data services and build capacity. This study measures the current level of data services skills of academic librarians and explores preferred methods of continuing education. An online survey was circulated asking…

This study examines the future of libraries in Nigeria during the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), when advanced technologies will change the way people live and work. It explores the outlook from the perspective of six academic librarians drawn from the six geopolitical zones in Nigeria. The survey findings reveal that the Fourth Industrial…

In order to align with university-wide assessment initiatives and to promote a systematic approach to one-shot assessment within our library, a team of five librarians participated in a campus-wide professional development program about student learning assessment. We then implemented library-specific professional development about student…

Journal clubs are meetings where participants engage in discussion or appraisal of professional literature and research. This study investigates the perceived value of librarians' participation in journal clubs. Using a hermeneutic dialectic process, we built a construction of the value of journal club participation based on interviews with…

Great attention has been devoted to mentoring for early-career librarians, but little has been paid to the post-tenure experience of academic librarians. Researchers sought to understand the mentoring experiences and barriers to promotion for academic librarians who hold faculty status at public R1 institutions. Surveys sent to tenured academic…

How do you effectively train and assess student staff in a learning commons environment? How do you foster a student-led approach while maintaining accurate and high-level service? How do you create an environment where student staff are engaged and motivated to succeed? Peer-to-peer service models are fundamental to many learning commons…

Increasingly, new librarians graduate to face a world of changing technology and new ways of interacting with information. The anxiety of this shifting environment is compounded for tenure-track librarians who must also meet scholarship and instruction requirements that may be unfamiliar to them. One way that librarians can navigate the transition…

Although mentoring is widely valued and encouraged within librarianship, it has been conceived mostly as a professional relationship that occurs after one has obtained a position. Thus, mentoring among LIS students is not customary--largely because internships and field experiences are not universally required. To address this problem, the…

Discussion of professional development opportunities for instruction librarians focuses on the ACRL (Association of College and Research Libraries) Institute for Information Literacy Immersion program. Describes experiences at the University of Massachusetts that resulted from librarians attending the program and reports results of a survey of…

Demonstrates that a broadened concept of staff development is important and possible. Describes the steps one library took in establishing a staff development plan; the committee that developed the programs; successful programs; and how, with modest expenditures, an investment can grow and provide benefits. Appendixes contain memos and an…

The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) commissioned Research USA, Inc., to conduct a survey of 468 of their individual members in order to find out more about them, their libraries, and their involvement with ACRL. Some of the specific areas studied in the survey include: (1) the type and place of their employment; (2) their…