Neurodivergent people consistently face less optimal outcomes than neurotypical people in education, their careers, and other areas of life. Anecdotally, personal knowledge management (PKM) is a useful tool for neurodivergent individuals. However, there is sparse research involving the information practices of neurodivergent adults in the field of…

This descriptive qualitative study explores undergraduate students' experiences of physical academic libraries to identify possible connections between physical academic library environments and students' affective experiences. Drawing on a combination of theoretical perspectives focused on how humans understand, navigate, and respond to space and…

The American Library Association (ALA) provides accreditation for master's programs in librarianship across the United States, helping provide skilled professionals in many types of libraries and information centers. The ALA Core Competencies are established for all professional librarian roles. As such they are broad and cover much more content…

Collection development is at the core of the work of children's librarians, an ongoing activity that shapes collections as well as library spaces, services, programming, and communities. The process of collection development includes the consideration of several factors that impact the evaluation, selection, and acquisition of books available for…

This dissertation explored the retention of career change Library Science students in an online, professional master's program. This study specifically examined retention through student motivations for career change, levels of self-regulation, and the deemed usefulness of Student Affairs services. This work explored Library Science career change,…

Literature in the field investigates and debates the importance of the MLIS degree in librarianship. This information is of limited use in Maine where over 30% of public library directors have only a high school diploma. The research questions guiding this Constructivist Grounded Theory study are: How do high school educated library directors in…

Information literacy describes expertise in information problem-solving. This expertise includes facility in several endeavors addressed by the information behavior literature, including information needs, seeking, and use. Definitions and descriptions of information literacy suggest that this expertise is broadly applicable to a variety of…

This research explores faculty management of the tensions between academia and practice. Using a mixed methods design, it consists of three separate studies with a focus on Library and Information Science (LIS) faculty. Using an exploratory sequential design, the studies are intended to identify the ways faculty connect with practitioners, to…

The positive impact of school libraries on student achievement is documented in a robust body of literature. Despite this evidence, the number of certified school librarians is declining nationally, and concerted advocacy efforts on the part of the American Library Association, the American Association of School Libraries and individual teacher…

Cyberbullying is a problem many young adults ages 12 to 18 have experienced on a daily basis. Adult support is critical in both the prevention and intervention of cyberbullying. Although parents, teachers, and school administrators have been highlighted as sources of support for cyberbullied young adults, librarians have not been studied as a…

This dissertation examines the sources of job satisfaction among 1,833 library and information science (LIS) master's program graduates in North Carolina from 1964-2009. Only respondents who identified themselves as librarians were included in the analysis. The study first examined the effects of traditional work-related variables such as income,…

The purpose of this study is to propose a means of reconciling the competing ideas of library and information science's identity, thereby strengthening professional autonomy. I make the case that developing a system of virtue ethics for librarianship would be an effective way to promote that reconciliation. The first step in developing virtue…

This grounded theory study explores the ways in which scholars conduct their research, including how they find and organize resources, how they identify and work with collaborators, how they interact with technology during the course of their research, and how they disseminate the results of a research project. Nine scholars were interviewed…

Many concepts of information have been proposed and discussed in library and information science. These concepts of information can be broadly categorized as empirical and situational information. Unlike nomenclatures in many sciences, however, the concept of information in library and information science does not bear a generally accepted…

The purpose of this study was to examine factors that may or may not contribute to the adoption of the innovation of virtual worlds by librarians. Using Everett Rogers' Diffusion Theory as a framework, the study sought to identify librarians with avatars (computer simulated representations of themselves) in the virtual world of Second Life,…