This paper encourages educators in library and information science (LIS) to adopt the "creative deliverable," that is, an assignment that gives students the freedom to display their understanding of course material in an almost unrestricted range of alternative formats and genres, while retaining some key features of traditional…

The "use" of library resources and services is frequently presented in library and information science (LIS) literature as a primitive concept: an idea that need not be defined when it is being measured as an operational variable in empirical research. This project considered representations of library "use" through the…

Public libraries are heavily affected by political and policy-making processes that shape the funding, activities, and roles of libraries in society, with the explosion of information policy decisions in the past two decades significantly increasing the responsibilities of libraries while also increasing limitations on their activities. Research…

The Editor of "ALJ" has invited me to comment on my 2001 article "Losing the quality battle in Australian education for librarianship" (Harvey 2001). The article was prompted by a period I spent as a visiting professor in the Department of Information Studies at UCLA (the University of California Los Angeles) and was written while I was there.…

Despite the old-fashioned view of the academic library as a static institution, libraries can and do change in response to the needs of users and stakeholders. Perhaps the most dramatic shift in services has been the transition from a purely physical to a combination physical/virtual or even virtual-only environment. This article examines how…

This article explores the questions to what extent educational research addresses library use in education and how the library can contribute to intercultural education. The focus is primarily on elementary education in Europe. Analysis of research publications was based on searches for peer-reviewed journals in international databases, literary…

Field experiences function as a link between LIS theory and practice. Students should be provided with an experience that is a true reflection of the professional environment. The increasing focus on research by academic librarians provides an opportunity and responsibility to integrate research into the field experiences of LIS students.…

This article defines the elements of Access Services, explains the importance of those aspects in the library, and proposes a course centered on Access Services for library schools. The areas of circulation, interlibrary loan, course reserves, collection maintenance, and public relations are core components of Access Services. Each of those…

This paper focuses on the accessibility of North American library and library school Web sites for all users, including those with disabilities. Web accessibility data collected in 2006 are compared to those of 2000 and 2002. The findings of this follow-up study continue to give cause for concern: Despite improvements since 2002, library and…

The information world in which library and information science (LIS) students study and are being educated is in a state of constant change. As Web 2.0 is becoming an important and central topic in our information world, the research reported here explores whether LIS students are familiar with technological changes and innovations, and whether…

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…

A recent American Library Association (ALA) report has shown that less than 1% of credentialed librarians are African American males. This article discusses possible reasons for this dearth; and, in an effort to inform future LIS recruiting and marketing campaigns, the included study attempted to discover which factors lead African American males…

While mission statements for various libraries and information centers necessarily vary, all librarians face "two very pressing charges: make voluminous numbers of electronic resources as visible as possible in a landscape of multiple access points and simultaneously manage all the technology, tasks, and data necessary to facilitate such…

The library and information science field is currently confronted with difficult decisions about how best to allocate acquisition expenditures among increasingly expensive journals. This article measures the return-on-investment of serial expenditures through the use of citation analysis, which is a widely used approach to ascertaining journal…

The recent literature on college and university library instruction largely focuses on undergraduate and, more specifically, first-year students. During a review, the author found that discussion of graduate students in library and information science literature is dominated by studies of information behavior and much less often on instruction…