University faculty members, librarians, and support staff developed hands-on, consumable, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) curricular materials that could be inexpensively provided to large audiences. Goals included fostering STEM interest, teaching STEM principles, and encouraging continued exploration in home and school…

Open Educational Resources (OERs) are online classroom content that can be reused, modified, and shared freely. The University of Maryland University College (UMUC) undertook a project to redesign its undergraduate curriculum using OERs in place of traditional textbooks. UMUC librarians have played a critical role in this project, helping to find…

The purpose of this article is to chronicle and discuss a unique research opportunity at LaGuardia Community College when Hurricane Sandy caused a week of class cancelations, including library instruction sessions for ENG101 students. Librarians took advantage of the natural sample, paired with randomly selected classes that had previously…

Tripp Reade is the school librarian at Cardinal Gibbons High School in Raleigh, North Carolina. This article describes how he redesigned his school's library orientation program after learning about escape rooms and a variant known as puzzle rooms. Puzzle rooms present players with a set of challenges to solve; they require "teamwork,…

In the spring of 2015, the University of Minnesota Libraries formed the Content Services department, which is comprised of Interlibrary Loan, Publishing Services, and the Copyright Permissions Service. These three service points, as well as additional Library units, work together with campus partners to save students money on their course…

Data can be a powerful tool for self-evaluation, goal setting, and advocacy in the school library. Regardless of the grade level or the size of the student body, any school library has meaningful data to mine and learn from. Basic data such as circulation numbers can impact a myriad of areas relevant to student learning such as collection…

The environment in which higher education institutions are situated has been impacted by a number of disruptive forces since the early 1990s, including acceleration in the capability of information technology (Beagle, 2006; Bennett, 2003; Foster, 2014), changing attitudes about learning pedagogy (Barr & Tagg, 1995), and calls for…

Librarians at Central Oregon Community College's Barber Library explored how to best serve the needs of three satellite campuses across a large geographic region. While initially intending to start an embedded librarianship program, a pair of surveys showed the relationships and awareness necessary for the foundation of such a program were…

This paper examines the extent to which public librarians are successfully prepared to engage the community in digital literacy and inclusion. A qualitative, multiple case study research design was chosen, using an analysis of policy documents and existing training programs offered by the libraries together with semi-structured interviews with…

This study examined gender and racial differences among undergraduate library collection users at the University of Mississippi. Checkout and electronic resource use data were compiled for the calendar year 2014. These data were used along with statistical testing to distinguish between groups and determine how well the library collection was…

"University Futures, Library Futures: Aligning library strategies with institutional directions" establishes a new framework for understanding the fit between emerging library service paradigms and university types. It examined the impact of increased institutional differentiation in universities on the organization of academic libraries…

This Spotlight will help readers investigate one state's plan to improve literacy with daily summer reading instruction; review how teachers can better support struggling older readers; gain expert insights into strategies for boosting reading proficiency; evaluate the merits of audiobooks for improving reading engagement; explore how short bursts…

Since it was released on November 30, 2022, ChatGPT has offered numerous opportunities for higher education professors to improve their course offerings. However, not all information provided by the application is accurate. The application has been known to yield highly inaccurate information with high confidence. Yet, with that knowledge, ChatGPT…

This case study presents the development of an asynchronous online module for an engineering undergraduate research program. It includes an overview of the development of the literature research module in Qualtrics and its transition to the campus LMS, Canvas. Assessment of student learning is described. The benefits to librarians of this mode of…

Home environments have the potential for rich literacy activities. Indeed, what parents do in and outside the home to support their child's learning has a powerful impact on their child's development, not only in terms of educational outcomes but also for wider ones, such as children's wellbeing. The impact of the home learning environment (HLE)…