J. Paul Leonard Library at San Francisco State University launched a web-scale discovery service, branded as OneSearch in 2013. Before that, Leonard library had been using Google Scholar since 2006. This study gathered usage data on OneSearch and Google Scholar from the library OpenURL link resolver, SFX, and the interlibrary loan server, ILLiad,…

Universities have been spending money on the acquisition of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to enable online library research support platforms. Such acquisitions can be justified if they are effectively utilized for what they are intended for. A quantitative research approach was employed in the study to investigate the use of…

Despite the widespread adoption of streaming video by academic libraries, there has been little discussion about how video content is discovered and accessed through the library catalog as compared to vendor platforms. This article explores the current status of video resources in the library catalog to better understand how users find and access…

Systematic reviews, and other forms of knowledge synthesis, are an increasingly popular research methodology being used in the sciences, humanities, and social sciences. Librarians are being called upon to support this work through consultation, instruction, and/or performing the systematic search on behalf of the research team. Professional…

Libraries have adopted web scale discovery services with the goal of providing their users with a streamlined research experience. However, the single search box that characterizes web scale discovery is one option among many that libraries continue to provide, including subject databases and other legacy tools. Libraries lack evidence regarding…

Creating information literate students and future employees is an expected outcome of a tertiary education. This paper shares insights from a successful collaboration between an academic and three university librarians to create an online learning module designed to develop students' professional information literacy capability: identifying…

For the past several years academic libraries have been adopting discovery systems to provide a search experience that reflects user expectations and improves access to electronic resources. University of Houston Libraries has kept pace with this evolving trend by pursuing various discovery options; these include an open-source tool, a federated…

Twelve scholarly papers and eighteen abstracts comprise the content of the nineteenth annual Brick & Click Libraries Conference, held annually at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Missouri. The proceedings, authored by academic librarians and presented at the conference, portray the contemporary and future face of…

The University of Michigan Library wanted to learn more about the kinds of searches its users were conducting through the "one search" search box on the Library Web site. Library staff conducted two investigations. A preliminary investigation in 2011 involved the manual review of the 100 most frequently occurring queries conducted…

This article provides a case study of how the University of Nebraska College of Law and Schmid Law Library use "buttons" to manage Law College faculty members' and librarians' online presence. Since Google is the primary search engine used to find information, it is important that librarians and libraries assist Web site visitors in…

Academic libraries are flocking to online social networking sites in an effort to meet users where they are. Pinterest is the latest of these rapidly growing online social networking tools. The author of this article reports results from a survey on academic libraries' presence on Pinterest. The survey found most academic library pinboards are in…

Google Scholar is a free service that provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly works and to connect patrons with the resources libraries provide. The researchers in this study analyzed Google Scholar usage data from 2006 for three library tools at San Francisco State University: SFX link resolver, Web Access Management proxy server,…

The contributions in this volume represent a decade of OCLC's user behavior research findings that articulate the need for the design of future library services to be all about the user. Highlights include: (1) People associate the library with books and do not consider the library in relation to online resources or reference services; (2) People…

A library's Web site is well recognized as the gateway to the library for the vast majority of users. Choosing the most user-friendly Web architecture to reflect the many services libraries offer is a complex process, and librarians are still experimenting to find what works best for their users. As part of a redesign of the Oregon State…

The year 2011 was the PALNI (Private Academic Library Network of Indiana) consortium's "rookie season" for the implementation of Primo, the 2010 Discovery Layer 500 race winner. In this article, the authors report on their transition to the cloud within Ex Libris Ltd.'s Primo TotalCare environment: their preparation, the steps involved…