Purpose: This paper aims to focus on academic library managers' learning practices in the context of cooperative work supported by computational artefacts. Academic library managers' everyday work is mainly cooperative. Their cooperation is supported predominantly by computational artefacts. Learning how to use the computational artefacts…

This study has examined librarians' possession of information and communication technology (ICT) skills and knowledge that are requisite to practicing embedded librarianship in Tanzanian academic libraries. An exploratory cross-sectional design and qualitative and quantitative approaches have been employed by the study to collect data from 166…

Distance librarians often do not have the opportunity to engage face-to-face with users of library services. Without this personal interaction, it can be difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of library services in meeting the needs of the distance learners. Distance librarians may not realize it, but most have a wealth of information at their…

In this article, a librarian at Lincoln Memorial University creates library services for an MBA program offered entirely online that is in the early stages of development. The library services include a subject guide and 4 tutorials that will be added to the MBA online orientation. Other services include offering online office hours and…

When looking for ways to improve library services, we considered what data sources were readily available to us and how we could harvest and use this data. We investigated three years of chat reference statistics at Central Michigan University, a large research institution, to gain a better understanding of our patrons' chat behavior. We then…

The growth in number and kind of online reference services has resulted in both new users consulting library research services as well as new patterns of service use. Staffing in-person and virtual reference services desks adequately requires a systematic analysis of patterns of use across service points in order to successfully meet fluctuating…

Embedded librarians in online courses provide a wealth of service and information to students. Though students indicate that these services are valuable, the librarians providing embedded services frequently note that these projects are very time consuming. This study examines the provision of a less time-intensive model of embedded librarianship…

The contributions in this volume represent a decade of OCLC's user behavior research findings that articulate the need for the design of future library services to be all about the user. Highlights include: (1) People associate the library with books and do not consider the library in relation to online resources or reference services; (2) People…

The use of interactive web technologies on public library web sites in the United States has been a topic of much discussion in recent years, and a shift in certain types of user services is underway. Terms like "Web 2.0" and even "Library 2.0" have become common in library literature and at conferences as those on the early…

Twenty-six scholarly papers and ten abstracts comprise the content of the thirteenth annual Brick and Click Libraries Symposium, held annually at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Missouri. The proceedings, authored by academic librarians and presented at the symposium, portray the contemporary and future face of librarianship. The…

As players in the delivery of services and online information, libraries are in the best position to use staff expertise and the technology they have developed to foster community awareness of social, professional and commercial interactions on the internet. Historically, libraries have been progressive institutions, undertaking constant…

Introduction: This study investigated unmonitored referrals in a nationwide, collaborative chat reference service. Specifically, it examined the extent to which questions are referred, the types of questions that are more likely to be referred than others, and the level of user satisfaction with the referrals in the collaborative chat reference…

Gathering qualitative information about usage behavior of library Web sites is a time-consuming process requiring the active participation of patron communities. Libraries that collect virtual reference transcripts, however, hold valuable data regarding how the library Web site is used that could benefit Web designers. An analysis of virtual…

This paper presents an annotated bibliography of 69 articles published in the 1990s that examine the impact of technology on reference service in public, school, and academic libraries. The paper is organized in the following seven parts, each dealing with a different type of application of technology: (1) "General Change Caused by…

This paper describes chat widgets, chunks of code that can be embedded on a web site to appear as an instant messaging system, and how they can be used on a science library web site to better serve library users. Interviews were conducted concerning experiences at science and humanities libraries and more similarities than differences were…