While virtual reference services (VRS) are becoming more and more common in academic libraries, implementing and maintaining well-used and effective VRS can be a challenge in the face of competing demands on time, staffing, and funding. Between 2011 and 2012, librarians at Washington State University, Pullman (WSU) have overhauled and reorganized…

The past decade has brought enormous changes in scholarly communication, leading many libraries to undertake large-scale digital publishing initiatives. However, no study has investigated how technical services departments are changing to support these new services. Using change management as a theoretical framework, the investigator uses content…

Across the campuses of many of our most prestigious universities, quiet and cautious negotiations are being attempted by academic librarians wishing to craft more robust and higher value service offerings to graduates in the form of access to their information resources: these negotiations are fraught with difficulties which, on first inspection,…

The open access (OA) movement is working to transform scholarly communication around the world, but this philosophy can also apply to metadata and cataloging records. While some notable, large academic libraries, such as Harvard University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Cambridge, released their cataloging records under OA…

The first section of this article reviews the literature on the changing face of reference, beginning with a discussion of the national decline in reference transactions, its causes, and the likelihood that online reference services might one day halt or reverse the decline. It then analyzes definitions of the term "reference," pointing…

The paper analyzes problems of theorizing and evaluating a short series of "Library Academy" events within a Carnegie Corporation-funded project to improve library service to researchers in six South African universities. (Contains 1 table.)

Embedded librarianship service describes the practice of librarians integrating actively into the user's environment, rather than remaining in the library to await requests for service. This paper examines the concept of embedded service in the recent literature, within the past 5 years. It reports on a survey of embedded service in Chinese…

The current study investigates factors influencing increase in reference transactions in a typical week in academic libraries across the United States of America. Employing multiple regression analysis and general linear modeling, variables of interest from the "Academic Library Survey (ALS) 2006" survey (sample size 3960 academic libraries) were…

With the growth of international student enrollment in Chinese universities, user perception has become an area of developing research in academic libraries. China's policy of opening up has led to the education and economic reforms allowing major universities to enroll international students. These changes have created an increasing need for…

OA is to become the future of academic library exchanges in China. With the government's support and promotion of OA, more and more Chinese academic libraries have been committed to participating in OA. The rapid development of OA not only has changed the model of traditional scholarly communication and brought a free communication environment of…

Study abroad programs in higher education increasingly play a major role in training students for global citizenship. This case study, conducted in a large research university in the United States, identifies the information needs of students and faculty in study abroad programs. Of particular interest is how awareness of library resources and…

Partnerships and collaborations among libraries are proven to enhance collective resources. The collaboration of multi-type libraries offers a unique opportunity to explore the potential of different libraries working together to provide the best possible service to their community members. This article provides a detailed report of a multi-type…

Virtual Reference Services (VRS) have high user satisfaction. The main problem is its low usage. We surveyed 100 academic library web sites to understand how VRS are presented. We then conducted a usability study to further test an active VRS model regarding its effectiveness.

The work of collection development in academic video game collections is at a crucial point of transformation--gaming librarians are ready to expand beyond console games collected in disc and cartridge format to the world of Internet games. At the same time, forms and genres of video games such as serious and independent games are increasingly…

Interest in subject specialists in academic libraries has recently been increasing. After being a trend in the West in the 1960s, interest declined in this method of service provision in academic libraries until its recent return to prominence in the last decade. The purpose of this article is to introduce the current movement of Korean…