As part of the national Future Ready Librarians initiative at the Alliance for Excellent Education, Mark Ray and Shannon McClintock Miller serve as national advocates for school library programs and librarians. Mark and Shannon began their library advocacy careers in school libraries. For eight years, Shannon was the district librarian in Van…

Inspired by the 2017 Big Ten Academic Alliance Library Conference's collective collection theme, the authors undertook a study to better understand the consortium's resource-sharing needs for Spanish and Portuguese materials published in Latin America. The authors employed multiple technologies to expedite gathering, reconciling, and analyzing…

As academic libraries explore their connection to student success and how library staff spend their time, it is important to understand how research consultations influence academic achievement. Several studies have found correlations between various measures of library use and grade point averages (GPAs), but only limited research has…

This study identifies the successes and challenges associated with the addition of a nonlibrary service desk in a university library's learning commons. The authors wanted to know whether a training and service collaboration with an outside unit could reliably and efficiently connect students to the librarians, academic support services, and other…

Iowa Wesleyan University (IW) has historically struggled with both assessment and supporting online students. Newly-appointed librarians and an impending re-accreditation visit prompted an increase in involvement and presence with assessment. In an attempt to expand the library's influence on campus, librarians took on a nontraditional role in the…

The Main Library Service Desk is a one-stop academic help center located between a newly renovated student-focused space called the Learning Commons and the library collections. Services began with the first day of classes, August 26, 2013, and assessment has been ongoing, in part due to the availability of data. Staffing levels, staffing hours,…

In September 2009, the University of Iowa Libraries embarked on an experiment with patron-driven acquisition (PDA) of e-books with ebrary and YBP. An e-book-only PDA plan was initiated, entirely unmediated and with instantaneous access to the content. MARC records were loaded for each title, determined by our YBP approval profile and other…

A study to compare the effectiveness of an in-person library orientation with an online asynchronous orientation was conducted with three sections of Social Work Research Methods, a required course in the University of Iowa's Master of Social Work program. Two sections of the course received an online orientation involving short videos, text and…

"Research Library Issues" ("RLI") is a quarterly report from ARL (Association of Research Libraries), CNI (Coalition of Networked Information), and SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition). This issue includes the following articles: (1) Rebalancing the Investment in Collections (H. Thomas Hickerson); (2)…

Geek the Library, a community awareness campaign designed to highlight the vital role of public libraries and raise awareness about the critical funding issues many libraries face, was developed based on the research findings included in "From Awareness to Funding: A study of library support in America." This study, published by OCLC in…

Electronic communication technologies continue to change the landscape of reference services. For many users, virtual communication is the preferred means of conversing. Synchronous virtual reference, similar to other synchronous means of communication, is an important method for reaching students and for providing teaching and learning…

The author is a reference and instruction librarian at Iowa State University with collection development and liaison responsibilities for chemistry, biochemistry, entomology, and natural resource ecology. She recently came to librarianship with an education and three years' experience in biochemistry and biotechnology. During the last four years…

It seems, at times, that a frantic race persists to ensure that a child, in the crucial learning stages of early elementary education, acquires the appropriate reading level before he or she "gets behind." Though there are obvious issues with branding a book "Grade Level One" or "Reading Level 2.2," it is nevertheless…

This article explores the process of embedding information literacy into a basic oral communication course. Discussion includes student performance as an impetus for change, collaborative course design between the oral communication teaching team and instructional librarians, and assessment initiatives. Suggestions for future collaborative work…

The authors report findings of a research study conducted at the Iowa State University Library. Data was gathered on the scanning of library materials by students working in the Interlibrary Loan (ILL) unit. The goals of the study were fourfold: (1) Develop measures of scanning productivity in ILL, (2) Determine if it is more productive to scan…