The College Library Directors' Mentor Program has operated for more than 20 years, during which a substantial portion of the target audience of first-year library directors of small colleges has participated. Through this article, the authors identify the purpose of the program, describe its evolution and current status, and examine the nature of…

This issue of "Research Library Issues" ("RLI") highlights the value of professional failure. The idea to explore this theme emerged from conversations with the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Innovation Lab Advisory Group earlier this year. It is the hope this issue highlights the value of failure--both its necessary…

Library orientations continue to excite, or plague, instruction librarians everywhere. Reaching first year students early can preempt academic heartache and research woes, yet the question of "what students really need" continues to evolve. This article presents a case study of a large-scale implementation of library orientations. The…

The trajectory of U.S. higher education in the next 20 years is portrayed by some as an arc of potential disaster and by others as a slightly upwardly inclined plane that may have some dips along the way. Generally these scenarios focus on the teaching and learning program of higher education institutions and give very little attention to the…

Librarians seek opportunities to improve outreach to faculty and promote shared interests in information literacy. A comprehensive review of syllabi for all undergraduate courses offered during one academic term examined course-level learning outcomes and graded assignments to see how well they aligned with the five Association of College and…

Despite the prevalence of academic libraries adopting web-scale discovery tools, few studies have quantified their effect on the use of library collections. This study measures the impact that EBSCO Discovery Service has had on use of library resources through circulation statistics, use of electronic resources, and interlibrary loan requests.…

Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, have recently emerged as a disruptive pedagogy gaining rapid momentum in higher education. In some states, proposed legislations would accredit MOOCs to provide college-credit courses in the name of cost saving, efficiency and access. While debates rage regarding the place of MOOCs in higher education, some…

This case study presents a conceptual model of researcher performance developed by Deakin University Library, Australia. The model aims to organize research performance data into meaningful researcher profiles, referred to as researcher typologies, which support the demonstration of research impact and value. Three dimensions shaping researcher…

George Kuh and Robert Gonyea's 2003 article entitled "The Role of the Academic Library in Promoting Student Engagement in Learning" appeared in "College and Research Libraries" in July 2003, after being presented as an invited paper at the ACRL 11th National Conference that April. Herein, Megan Oakleaf describes not only the…

This article explains how the South Piedmont Community College librarians educated faculty members about how they guide student use of the library and how it is advantageous for them to require high-quality resources for student papers. As documented by observations at SPCC and in the library literature, students use the tools they know to find…

Although the growth in popularity of graphic novels among readers of all ages and the expansion of graphic novels in both public and academic libraries has been well defined in library literature, the inclusion of graphic novels in community and junior college libraries has received little attention. The purpose of this article is to begin the…

University and college libraries often seek ways to demonstrate their impact for the academic community. This article reports the results from a two-year study that analyzed library use as demonstrated through checkouts and off-campus access to full-text resources against grade point averages (GPAs) of undergraduates and graduates at a large…

In this article, the author recollects her memories reading Constance A. Mellon's article, "Library Anxiety: A Grounded Theory and Its Development," when it appeared in the March 1986 issue of "College & Research Libraries." She was a reference librarian at at DePauw University in Indiana at the time, helping students…

The purpose of this paper is to describe how a series of one-shot or single class library instruction webinars were created for on-campus and distance education students at Virginia Tech, a land grant institution in rural southwestern Virginia. Virginia Tech's distance learning department on campus trained in Centra 7.6 software and the lead…

In fall of 2011 the University at Buffalo Libraries circulation department undertook Six Sigma training for the purpose of overhauling its student scheduling process. The department was able to mitigate significant staffing budgetary reductions and resource reallocations and to overcome the unique challenges of scheduling student labor for a…