Research consultations are a standard service in academic libraries and consume significant library resources. There is a lack of scholarship evaluating the impact of this service on faculty. This paper describes the impact of librarian consultations on faculty and their role in the research process. Data was collected from a survey of sixty-seven…

Financial literacy is the ability to understand how money works in a person's day-to-day life: how someone earns money, manages it, invests it, and donates it to help others. As librarians, we must realize that when patrons come to us for guidance in the area of financial literacy, they are trusting us to provide not only reliable information for…

Central Michigan University (CMU) provides a unique opportunity to study the impact of the move from face-to-face to online classes on student use of virtual reference services. As enrollments in face-to-face, off-campus classes declined between 2010 and 2016, the number of reference questions asked of the distance librarians declined at a…

"Affective competence," managing the feelings and emotions that students encounter throughout the content creation/research process, is essential to academic success. Just as it is crucial for students to acquire core literacies, it is essential that they learn how to manage the anxieties and emotions that will emerge throughout all…

Reference services in public libraries are changing dramatically. The Internet, online databases, and shrinking budgets are all making it necessary for non-traditional reference staff to become familiar with online reference tools. Recognizing the need for cross-training, Chesapeake Public Library (CPL) developed a program called the Database…

Some job descriptions of academic librarians, tenure track or otherwise, will emphasize publication, while in others, it is essentially an irrelevant factor. Some librarians have a combination of education and experience, however, that permits them to undertake research and writing in scholarly fields other than librarianship. In some ways,…

Online music research resources took center stage at the second plenary session "Wrangling the Information Universe: Moving From Institutional Portals to a Shared Resource for Online Music Sources" held on Friday, February 17, 2012, at the Music Library Association (MLA) 2012 Annual Meeting in Dallas, Texas. The Reference Sources…

What is the future direction of reference books? What types of policies are libraries implementing regarding the purchase of electronic reference books? Are libraries still buying hard copy reference items when an electronic equivalent is available? This paper discusses a national survey of libraries regarding the purchase and use of electronic…

In spring semester 2009, two of the authors taught LIB 5020--Information Sources & Services to graduate library science students at Appalachian State University. The course covers information seeking patterns and provides an overview of reference services. The course is also designed to examine and evaluate library reference materials and…

As individuals become more and more comfortable mediating all kinds of situations online and through various technologies, their virtual selves increasingly overlap their "real" lives. Posting a "happy birthday!" message on Facebook is as automatic as dropping a card in the mail. E-mailing relevant links to co-workers happens as naturally as…

When flood came to Cedar Rapids city, the Cedar Rapids Public Library (CRPL), IA, lost 160,000 items including large parts of its adult and youth collections, magazines, newspapers, reference materials, CDs, and DVDs. Most of its public access computers were destroyed as was its computer lab and microfilm equipment. The automatic circulation and…

The number of electronic resources has climbed up steadily in recent times. Some of these e-resources are reference sources, mostly in Science, Technology and Medicine (STM), which publishers convert to electronic for obvious reasons. The library budgets for materials usually have two main lines, budget for one time purchase (monographs) and…

Electronic reference resources are expanding traditional print reference collections far beyond the walls of the library building. While the library literature has seen a debate rage about the various merits and pitfalls of electronic reference sources, no one disputes they are here to stay. As more of the library content becomes available through…

This article features "Pop Culture Universe," which received the 2009 Dartmouth Medal honoring the creation of a reference work of outstanding quality. School librarians will find "Pop Culture Universe" a wonderful resource for assisting middle school and high school students with research projects on significant historical events that focus on…

Annie McQueen, librarian at David Starr Jordan Middle School in the Palo Alto Unified School District in California, is used to figuring out creative ways of getting what her media center needs, even though her budget is minuscule. McQueen gets additional support from the funds generated by the couple of book fairs she hosts each year. Plus, she…