The National Broadband Plan (NBP) recently announced by the Federal Communication Commission visualizes a significantly enhanced commitment to public computing centers (PCCs) as an element of the Commission's plans for promoting broadband availability. In parallel, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has…

Homeschooling families are everywhere these days. They're on television, giving interviews after winning national spelling bees. They're in the paper, profiled after making Olympic trials. They're on the radio, talking about the growing popularity of homeschooling as an educational choice. And they're definitely in libraries. According to a 2003…

Counter-storytelling is defined by critical race theory scholars as a method of telling the stories of those people whose experiences are not often told, including people of color, the poor, and members of the LGBTQ community. This article discusses multicultural young adult literature as a form of counter-storytelling, with an emphasis on how…

This article describes a method for the assessment of professional student outcomes (performance-type outcomes or soft skills). The method is based upon group activities, research on modern electrical engineering topics by individual students, classroom presentations on chosen research topics, final presentations, and technical report writing.…

Twenty years into the transformation initiated by the World Wide Web, this author notes that institutes of higher education have grown accustomed to a head-spinning pace of technological and social change. Innovations that would have amazed us ten years ago are now merely passing news, as transient as a tweet. Music, video, and journalism have…

Although it is well known that music can affect cognitive processes, little research has been conducted examining the influence of background music on students in information literacy classrooms. In 2010, librarians at Western Michigan University investigated the effect of background music on student engagement and retention of information…

Has your institution purchased discovery layer tools? Are you wondering how students are using them and how much return your institution is getting on that investment? Not only are there more resources available to students online than ever before, but there are also more avenues for students to discover those resources. The Royal Roads University…

In the last few decades, there has been steady increasing awareness of the need to empower women in order to improve their socioeconomic status to be able to cope and also contribute effectively in this period of economic crisis. ATI (access to information) provision is a vital factor in empowerment, thus, many organizations, such as library,…

The use of information resources for teaching and learning in an academic environment is undergoing a dramatic transformation. The development of digital technologies and the growth of the Internet have changed the format as well as the dissemination methods of scholarly resources. Digital libraries have been created as part of the transition from…

This dissertation evaluates programs seeking to address educational access and quality in developing countries. Chapter 1 examines the impact of two school feeding programs on enrollment in Sri Lanka. Chapter 2 assesses the relative productivity of several modes of implementing an Indian English education curriculum in India. Finally, chapter 3…

The intent of this research was to discover what, if any, disconnect exists between community college students' library perceptions and technology use. The researcher studied how students at a very-large southwestern community college are using the physical and virtual college library, and their overall technology and library technology use. The…

This case study describes an information literacy lab for an undergraduate biology course that leads students through a range of resources to discover aspects of genetic information. The lab provides over 560 students per semester with the opportunity for hands-on exploration of resources in steps that simulate the pathways of higher-level…

This article describes an analysis of course syllabi from selected courses in the biology curriculum at Iowa State University. The purpose of this research was to learn about the numbers and types of information literacy assignments given to students majoring in biology. Overall, the most common assignment type for biology majors was a lab report…

Learners within academic library settings use information resources toward specific ends--learner-constructed research and writing projects that offer new perspectives on particular topics. Such projects may take the form of individual research papers and/or class presentations, literature reviews, theses, e-portfolios, web pages, or…

Texas A&M University has a history of international collaboration, cooperation and global outreach. Texas A&M University at Qatar provides engineering students in the Middle East with an education, and ultimately, a degree comparable to that found on our home campus in College Station. The Texas A&M University Libraries have provided…