Within the literature exploring the role of research in academic librarianship, very little attention has been paid to the perspectives of upper library administrators. This perspective is critical because library administrators play a key role in hiring, evaluating, supporting, promoting, and tenuring professional librarians. As a way of bringing…

With the Poetry Center at San Francisco State University, the author has begun to build an open-access digital repository for poetry chapbooks. The repository is essentially a chapbook exchange: a place for poets to share their current works. Users are invited to share their chapbooks via upload and as such gain access to the chapbook repository.…

Supporting the "Infrastructure Needs of 21st Century School Library Programs," also known as the Pennsylvania School Library Project, was a one-year project conducted in Pennsylvania to better identify and understand what stakeholders--teachers, administrators, parents, school and community leaders, and education associations--expect…

The digital humanities (DH) are attracting considerable attention and funding at the same time that this nascent field is striving for an identity. Some research libraries are making significant investments by creating digital humanities centers. However, questions about whether such investments are warranted persist across the cultural heritage…

Nearly two years ago, the Center for an Urban Future published "Branches of Opportunity," a report documenting that New York City's public libraries have become more vital than ever, and are serving more New Yorkers in more ways than ever before. This new report provides an exhaustive analysis of the libraries' capital needs and offers a…

Although scholarship has addressed issues around serving international students in U.S. and Canadian libraries, reports on how Chinese graduate students use information in Chinese universities, especially for a particular discipline, are rare. In this study, the author interviewed 15 graduate students and researchers in a top-ranked chemistry…

Given the increasing power and prominence of political figures in the United States who openly espouse xenophobic, misogynistic, white nationalist positions, it is only natural to anticipate encountering students who express these views in our libraries and classrooms. This essay uses a classroom encounter with a student expressing xenophobic…

The purpose of the current study was to determine whether adding gamification to a doctoral level class would improve 1) students' self-reported feelings of motivation, competency, and engagement, and 2) knowledge of the library resources available to complete research. Twenty-one students agreed to participate and completed the pretest survey.…

Introduction: This paper presents a review of research framed within the concept of social capital and published by library and information science researchers. Method: Ninety-nine papers fitting the criteria of having a specific library and information science orientation were identified from two periodical databases: "Library and…

Collaboration among librarians and faculty when designing courses can offer a new model of embedded librarianship that allows better scalability and opportunities for more authentic assessment. This column looks at one example at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The published literature on information literacy in mathematics is relatively sparse. This article explores the current state of information literacy initiatives in undergraduate mathematics. The authors survey academic librarians (n = 118) who liaise with mathematics departments in order to gain an understanding of their practices and attitudes…

Seekers of information in libraries either go through a librarian intermediary or they help themselves. When they go through librarians they must develop their questions through four levels of need, referred to here as the visceral, conscious, formalized, and compromised needs. In his pre-search interview with an information-seeker the reference…

This study examines the nature and value of undergraduate students' experiences with the academic library. The data represent responses from more than 300,000 students between 1984 and 2002 to the College Student Experiences Questionnaire. Although library use did not appear to make independent contributions to desirable outcomes of college, such…

This article describes a project to engage sociology students in real-world research designed to foster critical thinking about food security. Faculty-librarian collaboration was an essential component. An open-ended questionnaire was administered to three classes at the end of the semester. Assessed were students' experiences gathering data and…

This study explored library graduate student perceptions of their readiness for and comfort levels in doing activities related to accessibility and disability. The study also aimed to determine the training needs of library graduate students. A survey with both quantitative and qualitative questions was developed, snowball sampling was used, and…