Sourcing information related to socio-scientific issues requires sophisticated literacies to read and evaluate conflicting accounts often signified by disagreement among experts, multiple solutions or misinformation. Much of the previous work exploring how young people approach conflicting information has tended to focus on students in the…

This paper compares website usability--specifically library users' understanding of library terms--for fifty-one original research studies between 2012-2021, with the findings of John Kupersmith's 2011 white paper "Library Terms That Users Understand." Studies reported approximately twice as many terms that users didn't understand than…

This study explores how faculty across disciplines access and share scholarly serial content and what expectations they have for immediacy. The authors conducted twenty-five in-depth, semi-structured interviews with faculty of various ranks representing all Illinois State University (ISU) colleges. The findings, presented in the words of…

Alongside climate change, democracy, and public health, digital disinformation and misinformation, or "digital dismisinfo," stands among the most pressing of global challenges. But how are societies responding to that challenge? Who are the key actors, what solutions do they propose or enact, and how does their work interact with that of…

The American news media is facing a crisis of public trust fueled, in part, by an epistemological disagreement of what constitutes quality news. Through a series of 50 interviews with journalism professionals and students, this research investigates how evidence-based journalism is created by gathering data on expert and novice research practices.…

Purpose: This study aims to recognize the challenge of identifying deceptive information and provides a framework for thinking about how we as humans negotiate the current media environment filled with misinformation and disinformation. Design/methodology/approach: This study reviews the influence of Wilson's (2016) General Theory of Information…

The University Libraries at Virginia Tech established an Open Access Subvention Fund (OASF) in August 2012. Although it began as a two-year pilot project, the Fund has continued to the present. Anyone at Virginia Tech is eligible to apply for funding to offset the cost of an article processing charge to publish in an open access journal. To learn…

This dissertation is an interdisciplinary effort to combine the fields of education, linguistics, and technology. The practical aims of this study are an attempt to offer insights and avenues for the development and administration of better online presences for institutions of higher learning. While the theoretical purpose aimed to utilize…

The information-seeking behavior has proven vital in understanding people's search behavior while seeking information about a particular topic or field. However, in some geographical regions, studies that focus on information-seeking behavior are few, specifically studying Arabic users' information-seeking behavior. A handful of studies…

In 2015, the Wilmington Education Improvement Commission, now known as the Redding Consortium for Educational Equity, emphasized the importance of parent and family engagement to the effectiveness of public education. The complex task of navigating educational systems has become further complicated by the pandemic over the past two years. It is…

In the United States, the internet is a vital resource for LGBTQ+ youth to meet their sexual and reproductive health information needs, especially those who cannot receive necessary information from family, healthcare providers, and classrooms. In this dissertation, I present three papers that connect content moderation policies and their impacts…

Information behavior is an important area of conceptual knowledge for reference service providers, as it provides structure for understanding users' information seeking and use. This study explores the extent to which information behavior theories, models, and concepts have been integrated into professional education for reference and information…

Purpose: Organizational learning (OL) has been conceptualized as a critical component in school change processes. Nevertheless, OL in the school context is still somewhat obscure and difficult to comprehend, thus it is rarely translated into operational structures and processes and later permanently sustained. The purpose of this study is to…

Universities have been spending money on the acquisition of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to enable online library research support platforms. Such acquisitions can be justified if they are effectively utilized for what they are intended for. A quantitative research approach was employed in the study to investigate the use of…

Seeking to better understand the longitudinal association between online usage of library-licensed content and short- and long-term student performance, we linked EZproxy logs to institutional university data to study how library usage impacts semester and cumulative GPAs. Panel linear mixed effects regression models indicate online library usage…