The purpose of this research was to evaluate academic library residency programs that successfully recruit and retain academic librarians of color. This study examines library residencies in the United States and discusses findings of two nationwide surveys. One survey posed questions to residents about the structure of their residencies, aspects…

As long as empirical research has existed, researchers have been doing "data management" in one form or another. However, funding agency mandates for doing formal data management are relatively recent, and academic libraries' involvement has been concentrated mainly in the last few years. The National Science Foundation implemented a new…

Although cited reference studies are common in the library and information science literature, they are rarely performed in nonacademic institutions or in the atmospheric and oceanic sciences. In this paper, we analyze more than 400,000 cited references made by authors affiliated with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration between…

E-readers are increasingly popular personal devices, but can they be effectively used for the needs of academic libraries' clients? This paper employs an evidence-based approach that examines the role and efficacy of implementing an E-reader Loan Service at McGill University Library. Suggestions are offered as to what lending model and device…

There's a lot of focus on the "Next Gen" librarians out there bringing a youth perspective that's supposed to shake things up and introducing new ideas and practices into a profession that sometimes moves forward at a glacial pace. But the ideas of the new generation do not invalidate the work done by those who came before. In fact, change in…

Duane Webster is a visionary leader who, throughout his career, has had a significant impact on the improvement of libraries and librarianship. His work to establish the Association of Research Library's (ARL) Office of Management Studies (OMS) and its several organizational improvement programs laid the foundation for organization development in…

The Association of Research Libraries' diversity initiatives, under the leadership of Duane Webster and member libraries, have had a visible and long-lasting influence on the makeup of academic librarianship. ARL's accomplishments and progress in advancing diversity comprise important milestones for librarianship and did not come without…

This issue of "Research Library Issues" includes the following articles: (1) The University's Role in the Dissemination of Research and Scholarship--A Call to Action; (2) ARL Statement to Scholarly Publishers on the Global Economic Crisis (Karla Hahn); (3) Reinventing Science Librarianship: Themes from the ARL-CNI Forum (Elisabeth Jones); and (4)…

Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) mandates that programs and services be accessible to people with disabilities. While schools of library and information science (SLIS*) and university libraries should model accessible Web sites, this may not be the case. This article examines previous studies about the Web accessibility of…

This article describes the card-sorting techniques used by several academic libraries, reports and discusses the results of card-sorting usability tests of the Western Michigan University Libraries' Web site, and reveals how the WMU libraries incorporated the findings into a new Web site redesign, setting the design direction early on. The article…

Twenty-three scholarly papers and twelve abstracts comprise the content of the eleventh annual Brick and Click Libraries Symposium, held at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Missouri. The peer-reviewed proceedings, authored by academic librarians and presented at the symposium, portray the contemporary and future face of…

In 2003, during the Biennial migration of academic librarians to the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) conference, several of the programs in Charlotte, NC, discussed the recruitment and retention of the next generation but with an obvious lack of input from newly recruited librarians. In response, with Liza Posas, a library…

Discusses the role of librarians in university and research libraries, noting basic personal qualifications (problem-solving and managerial abilities, undergraduate preparation), and basic assumptions that must underlie planning for library education programs to produce professionals prepared to cope with the real world. (EJS)

Reports results of a bibliometric analysis of referencing patterns within journal articles published in "College and Research Libraries" (C&RL) and the "Journal of Academic Librarianship" (JAL) from 1984 through 1986. Comparisons are made between scholarliness, commonality of research bases, and relative contributions; and…

The question "What is the role for research in library and information science?" lies at the heart of an ongoing project sponsored by the Office of Library Programs in the U.S. Department of Education. The project, which was begun in 1986-87, is designed to identify researchable issues that could help libraries attain or maintain a leadership…