School librarians act as servants of the school community and protectors of students' rights, and it is the ethical duty of school librarians to champion student privacy and resist threats to it. This article addresses the legality of this process based upon the 2007 article "How Does the Family Rights and Privacy Act [FERPA] Affect You"…

The authors compared Web usability definitions, collected from library professionals at academic institutions of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) through online surveys in 2007 and 2012, to determine whether library practitioners' perspectives had altered as information technologies evolved during this time. The authors applied three…

This article argues that accessibility and universality are essential to good Web design. A brief review of library science literature sets the issue of Web accessibility in context. The bulk of the article explains the design philosophies of progressive enhancement and responsive Web design, and summarizes recent updates to WCAG 2.0, HTML5, CSS…

As information literacy continues in its centrality to many academic libraries' missions, a line of inquiry has developed in response to ACRL's charge to develop information literate citizens. The literature of critical information literacy questions widely held assumptions about information literacy and considers in what ways librarians may…

The authors argue for the overwhelming importance of finding and including culturally diverse literature into the curricula teachers are authorized to teach. They discuss the implications of use and offer ideas on how to identify quality literature to include in classroom and school libraries.

This paper is based on two studies conducted in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 2008 and in Kampala, Uganda, in 2014. The basic research question addressed in both studies was: "What are the experiences in the lives of upper elementary-aged children that foster an intrinsic motivation to seek information?" The secondary question was:…

This case study examines patron record privacy and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) within a consortial environment. FERPA requirements were examined, as well as college and library policy and procedure. It was determined that information in library patron records is directory information and, under most circumstances, does…

Academic librarians have been engaged in embedded librarianship for nearly 15 years, yet there are few published research studies on the impact of physically embedded librarians, who work alongside departmental faculty. This study leveraged a change in reference service to analyze what happened when subject librarians moved from the library…

In Botswana, the costs and requirements to study full-time are very high. Not everyone can afford to study full-time without forfeiting their current roles, for example, in 1999 the Center for Continuing Education (CCE) in Botswana launched a Diploma in Primary Education distance education programme, to upgrade academic and professional…

Extension educators, staff, and specialists need to use surveys and other measurement instruments to assess their programming and conduct other research. Challenges in locating tests and measurement tools, however, include lack of time and lack of familiarity with techniques that can be used to find them. This article discusses library resources…

This study measures the opinions of ARL librarians concerning the benefits and disadvantages of faculty status in academic librarianship. Average responses from faculty and nonfaculty librarians, as well as from tenured and tenure-track librarians, are analyzed to determine the general perceptions of each group. Overall, faculty librarians…

Previous studies indicate that library anxiety is a phenomenon experienced by many university-level students that impedes successful information retrieval, thereby negatively impacting academic performance. This study examines the relationship between library anxiety and personality in graduate students at the master's level. Students from various…

The history of academic library involvement in service learning is varied. This paper provides an overview of service learning and the literature on academic libraries' participation in service-learning activities. A vision of service-learning participation is described, as well as the implementation of service-learning activities in two library…

Recent years have seen a growing emphasis on modern special collections (in themselves no new phenomenon), with a dichotomy between guidance for detailed cataloguing in "Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Books)" (DCRM(B), 2007) and the value of clearing cataloguing backlogs expeditiously. This article describes the De la Mare…

Libraries are constantly challenged to find ways to demonstrate their value to their institutions. Can hosting a National Library of Medicine (NLM) exhibition increase a library's impact? In 2012 the University of Toledo engaged their constituents by hosting and developing programming for the NLM exhibit Harry Potter's World: Renaissance Science,…