Docent programs are in flux. Many institutions have rethought their programs to encourage more diverse voices: some have eliminated the docent role, while others have changed their structure and offered additional training. When The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens decided to invest in its docent program as part of an…

Family engagement is a shared responsibility among families, educators, and communities to support children's learning and development. For families, it is about the knowledge, attitudes, values, and behaviors that enable children to be motivated, enthusiastic, and successful learners. For libraries, this means having respectful partnerships with…

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Library defines a project bibliography as a bibliography of publicly available publications relating to a specific JPL instrument or mission. These bibliographies may be used to share information between distant project team members, as part of the required Education and Public Outreach effort, or as part of…

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a California public university launched the Pandemic Histories Archive Project (PHAP) in collaboration with the library. This online service-learning opportunity empowered undergraduates to describe and reflect on their pandemic experiences and represent their communities by contributing to the library's…

Libraries have become increasingly interested in studying the use of spaces within their buildings. Traditional methods for tracking library building use, such as gate counts, provide little information on what patrons do once they are in the library; therefore, new methods for studying space usage are being developed. Particularly promising are…

In 2016, the Office of Correctional Education in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation embarked on a process of implementing professional learning communities (PLCs) in all 35 California state prisons. The American Institutes for Research provided professional development and consulting on the PLC process. Through working to…

How translational researchers use data is becoming an important support function for libraries to understand. Libraries' roles in this increasingly complex area of Web librarianship are often unclearly defined. The authors conducted two focus groups with physicians and researchers at an academic medical center, the UCLA David Geffen School of…

In early January 2017, educators and leaders at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum considered how they could best address the need for news literacy training in the wake of the fake news eruption. In the spirit of shared authority, the Reagan Library and Museum partnered with Pepperdine University to create a public forum,…

Using the framework of physical campus ecology and socio-academic integration moments theory, the researcher sought to identify physical university spaces that successful Latina/o transfer students turned to as sites of positive socio-academic integration. Findings revealed that students developed a keen spatial awareness of comfort spaces where…

Few innovations have galvanized libraries, schools, and museums like the maker movement. "Makerspaces" are community centers that combine manufacturing equipment with education in a way that lets people collaborate, explore and innovate. In makerspaces, people apply scientific and engineering principles in a hands-on environment to…

The conservation and well-being of exotic animals is core to the mission of zoos, aquariums and many small nonprofit wildlife groups. Increasingly, these organizations are committed to scientific research, both basic and applied. To ascertain the current state of the libraries that support their efforts, librarians at the San Diego Zoo conducted…

While some professions maintain strong professional boundaries, public librarianship remains a field in which a significant number of those delivering service do not have library degrees. In this article, the author discusses the results of a new hiring practices survey from "Library Journal" ("LJ"). The survey, coupled with…

"Road Tripping Down the Digital Preservation Highway" follows the continuing adventures of Peter Palmer, erstwhile librarian at Bellaluna University and manager of the library's and University's digital content, as he journeys down the Digital Preservation Highway. In this article, Palmer is put in charge of a task force to determine…

The upcoming round of exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 anticircumvention provision and the questions raised by the copyright infringement lawsuit filed against the against University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) for its streaming video practices illustrate the problematic state of the law concerning the digitization…

Sandwiched between Los Angeles and San Diego counties, nudging up to Riverside and San Bernardino to the east, Orange County, California is far more diverse than the stereotype. Orange County has no dominant city; its two largest, Santa Ana and Anaheim--each with populations around 350,000--are, respectively, home to lower-income Latinos and a…