Academic librarians do not engage with all disciplinary departments equally. Despite equal or even greater efforts, some departments are less responsive to librarian outreach. One such department is mathematics. To understand mathematics departments' relationships with their academic librarians, three mathematics librarians created a 20-question…

This exploratory study seeks to gather preliminary information about the roles that academic librarians in the United States (US) and Canada play in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) work on their campuses. It also provides insight into how librarians at US Carnegie Research 1 (R1) classified universities and U15 Group of Canadian…

This study investigated 299 chat reference interactions from an academic library consortium for instances of teaching and compared these against other characteristics of the chat, such as question content, staff type, user status, user satisfaction, institutional affiliation, length, and shift busyness. Statistical analysis revealed that teaching…

Systematic reviews, and other forms of knowledge synthesis, are an increasingly popular research methodology being used in the sciences, humanities, and social sciences. Librarians are being called upon to support this work through consultation, instruction, and/or performing the systematic search on behalf of the research team. Professional…

McMaster University's Health Sciences Library (HSL) began to transition to a new liaison service model in early 2018. One of its librarians sought to understand how an academic health sciences library can optimise its support for academic undergraduate programmes. This scoping review of the literature was pursued with the aim to submit an informed…

This compilation of articles brings together ideas on the changing roles and opportunities for academic library liaisons with faculty. Five institutions share their reorganizations and redefinitions of what it means to be a liaison in today's research library in this issue of "Research Library Issues" ("RLI"). There are many…

This article analyses the information literacy (IL) competencies of high-achieving undergraduate students through the lens of undergraduate research celebrations in a North American University. This article focuses on York University's Undergraduate Research Fair, and shares findings from an analysis of students' IL award submissions including…

The Future Voices in Public Services column is a forum for students in graduate library and information science programs to discuss key issues they see in academic library public services, to envision what they feel librarians in public service have to offer to academia, to tell us of their visions for the profession, or to tell us of research…

Examines academic library service to labor groups, particularly in the area of Internet training. Results of an informal survey of 53 academic libraries in schools with labor study programs in the United States and Canada indicate that few provide direct services to labor unions, and provides an example of one that does at Cornell University.…

This SPEC (Systems and Procedures Exchange Center) Kit presents the results of a survey of Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member libraries designed to explore to what extent preservation activities have been integrated into research library operations by examining the many facets of mature preservation programs and determining how much…

Examines the library short course orientation program for support staff, primarily secretaries, administrative assistants and researchers, teaching and laboratory assistants, at the University of Victoria; summarizes course evaluations, and poses suggestions for program improvement. (CWM)

Suggests programs to increase effectiveness of academic orientation and bibliographic instruction for adult university students. Adult enrollment patterns in Canada and characteristics of adult students which have implications for orientation and bibliographic instruction are examined. Eighteen footnotes are included. (EJS)

Describes a computerized reference and bibliographic instruction system currently under development at the University of Waterloo Library. The functions of the system, which will include query negotiation, suggestions for research strategies, referral to appropriate reference materials, information on library services and locations, and library…

This survey of 288 academic, public, and special librarians in Canada examined attitudes toward the role of bibliographic instruction in reference service. Results indicated that academic librarians stress instruction, special librarians stress information delivery, and public librarians fall between the two positions. It was found that…

Reports survey results of user education objectives and practices in New Zealand academic libraries, and makes comparisons to a Canadian study. The New Zealand research explored librarians' attitudes about the relationship between user education and information literacy. Five tables include resources, methods, mean-importance rank, preferred…