Academic reference services face great challenges as they cope with the pace of technological change, competition from other information service providers, and tight budgets. In fact, some critics suggest that reference services are no longer relevant or necessary as more information moves online. This study examines a nationwide survey that…

Working with younger staff and student employees can be a challenge for library supervisors in a multigenerational workplace. Because members of the Millennial Generation have different work expectations, managers need to adjust to best meet their needs. By surveying its five hundred student employees, Brigham Young University's Harold B. Lee…

Objective: The goal of this study was to examine the methodologies used to study librarian-faculty relationships and to use the Key Mediating Variable model (KMV) of The Trust and Commitment Theory of Relationship Marketing to assess the quality of the librarian-faculty relationship as it has been portrayed in the literature. Relationship…

Both the library and the museum communities have developed conceptual models for the information they produce about the collections they hold: FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) and CIDOC CRM (Conceptual Reference Model). But neither proves perfectly adequate when it comes to some specific types of rare and unique materials:…

This document presents data that describe collections, expenditures, personnel, and services in 64 medical libraries at Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member institutions throughout North America. In 2007-2008, the reporting health sciences libraries held a median of 240,955 volumes, spent a total of $240,019,298, and employed 2,304…

The central argument of the article is that while the building, the collection and the staff were inseparably linked, in a digital environment these facets of the library are diverging. This divergence clouds the process of envisioning a future for the library, but, if properly defined, it is a source of clarity, which sheds light on strategic…

Today many library resources are accessible 24/7. Students can be in the classroom, home, or at their favorite fast food place and do what once required a visit to the library. Electronic access to information has become a major part of the culture. No longer are students just watching a 16mm projected film in class; now they can access online…

This study seeks to explore what factors influence students' ICT use and web technology competence. The objectives of this study are the following: (a) To what extent do certain elements of Rogers' (2003) Diffusion of Innovations Theory (DOI) explain students' ICT use, (b) To what extent do personality characteristics derived from the Big Five…

This case study explores the use of flipped teaching in three different undergraduate engineering courses, discussing the advantages and disadvantages of class size and how it affects the delivery of information literacy instruction as observed through student engagement and the perceived helpfulness of the instruction. A flipped classroom was…

Research tells us that reading is correlated to academic achievement but how do we motivate students to read? How can schools build reading cultures? Through the case study of a government secondary school in Singapore, I examine how attention to the invisible network of resources that support reading can provide insight into students' resources…

Statistics suggest the prevalence of grade inflation nationwide, and researchers perform many analyses on student grades at both university and college levels. This analysis focuses on a one-credit library instruction course for undergraduate students at a large public university. The studies examine thirty semester GPAs and the percentages of As…

Introduction: This study explores blind users' unique help-seeking situations in interacting with digital libraries. In particular, help-seeking situations were investigated at both the physical and cognitive levels. Method: Fifteen blind participants performed three search tasks, including known- item search, specific information search, and…

Built as one of 60+ hubs on the HUBzero platform, STEMEdhub was developed in 2011 as a resource for research, education, and collaboration in STEM education. The hub currently supports 82 different groups. In this article, the authors describe two specific groups (SLED and AAU) that are taking advantage of numerous communication and resource tools…

Web-scale discovery systems are becoming prevalent in research libraries. Although a number of studies have explored various impacts of discovery systems, few studies exist on user satisfaction. The investigators of this study evaluated user satisfaction with the discovery service Summon at Ryerson University, using online questionnaires and…

In searching for alternatives to multiple choice tests and document-based questions, the authors were inspired by the common practice of "do-nows" (also known as "bell work") in which teachers give students a brief task at the beginning of class to prepare them for the day's lesson. Could these minutes at the start of class be…