Library and Information Science Commons^™

Walking The Walk: Searches That Demonstrate Commitment To An Inclusive, Diverse, And Equitable Library Workplace, Marlowe Bogino, Ash Lierman

Libraries Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Graduate Students' E-Book Awareness And Usage At A Public Research University In The U.S.A., Denise Brush, Daniel G. Kipnis

Libraries Scholarship

Purpose

This study aims to understand the level of graduate students’ awareness and usage of e-books purchased by the authors’ university library since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors created a Qualtrics survey with 13 questions that was sent to the university’s graduate student email list. The survey was sent in the fall of 2023 and was open for one month. The list had 3,318 subscribers; 113 complete responses were received, for a response rate of 3.4%.

Findings

The results found that doctoral students (80%) are more aware than master’s students (64%) of e-book availability through the library, and usage …

The Wicked Problem Of Climate Change And The Challenge Of Engagement: Exploring Educational Approaches And Possibilities For Information Literacy, Andrea Baer

Libraries Scholarship

Climate change is a prime example of a “wicked problem”: it is characterized by complexity and unboundedness and has no complete or simple solutions, though communities can develop constructive interventions that address particular aspects of the problem (for example, in cities increasing green spaces that have a cooling effect). Because the problem of climate change is so expansive and the answers to it remain limited in scope and impact, engaging with the topic inevitably evokes difficult emotions like uncertainty, overwhelm, despair, and grief. So it is understandable that a common response to the realities of climate change has been denial …

Poster: Do Our Graduate Students Know The Library's Books Are Online Now?, Denise Brush, Daniel G. Kipnis

Libraries Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Teaching Librarians’ Experiences Of Individual And Shared Agency: The Lens Of Librarian Relationships And Workplace Culture, Andrea Baer

Libraries Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Reframing Wikipedia As An Information Source: Concepts And Strategies For Critical Inquiry And Digital Literacy., Andrea Baer

Libraries Scholarship

Since its inception in 2001, Wikipedia has grown to become the largest and most popular reference source in the world. Contrary to the idea that it lives in the Internet’s Wild West, this resource has robust infrastructure, with editorial guidelines, processes, and dedicated volunteers who help to make Wikipedia an invaluable information source for learning about almost any topic. Of course, it’s also true that not every Wikipedia article is reliable, and that the quality and depth of articles ranges. The crowdsourced nature of Wikipedia, along with its extensive editorial processes, make it not only a powerful (albeit imperfect) reference …

Poster: Orcid Integration At Rowan University, Jonathan J. Jiras, Denise Brush, Benjamin H. Saracco

Libraries Scholarship

Rowan University wanted a single, streamlined point of access to information about research activity by all our faculty. The Technology Services Librarian proposed leveraging our ORCID membership to integrate faculty research information in ORCID with university identity management services. Information Resources & Technology (IRT) worked with the Division of Research and the Libraries to design and implement a solution that achieved this goal.

Academic Instruction Librarians’ Conceptions Of Teacher Agency And Affective Orientations Toward The Concept, Andrea Baer

Libraries Scholarship

This article reports on findings of an online survey on academic instruction librarians’ conceptions and experiences of teacher agency in the context of their instruction work and, more specifically, on their affective orientations (positive, ambivalent, or negative emotions and feelings) toward teacher agency. Two key dimensions of participants’ conceptions of teacher agency are evident throughout this analysis: 1) views of teacher agency as an individual experience of autonomy (individual agency) and/or views of it as more relational and interactive (and thus potentially collective), and 2) beliefs about the feasibility of librarians’ teacher agency, given librarians’ roles and positions as educators. …

Online Source Evaluation Through “Lateral Reading”: A Workshop For Educators, Andrea Baer, Daniel G. Kipnis

Libraries Scholarship

Learning Outcomes:

• Become familiar with and apply lateral reading strategies to evaluating online sources.
• Explore ways to teach lateral reading to students in your educational context.

Audience: All educators, including K-12 teachers, public librarians, academic librarians, educational administrators and community organizers)

Both everyday life experience and a growing body of research show just how hard it is to determine the credibility of online sources. Traditional checklist approaches to evaluating websites (e.g., the CRAAP test) are ineffective, despite their continued prevalence. A more effective approach to quickly assessing the credibility of an online source is lateral reading. “Lateral reading” essentially involves …

Chapter 6: Launching A Collaborative Research Data Management Services Program At Rowan University, Shilpa Rele, Benjamin H. Saracco

Libraries Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Preferring Print: The Planned Behavior And Preferences Of First-Generation College Students In The Academic Library, Jennifer K. Matthews, Ane Turner Johnson

College of Education Departmental Research

Background: Academic libraries have been adapting and changing their collections with technology. Often this technology has accompanied a transition from physical collections, such as print books, to electronic collections and electronic books. Understanding how this shift away from print formats might affect certain campus populations is essential as electronic collections continue to grow and expand in various academic institutions. Methods: This mixed methods case study aimed to understand how first-generation college students at a public research university use print books versus electronic books. Data was collected in two phases, with the first phase consisting of a Likert scale survey distributed …

Opening The Door To Student Wellness: An Access Services Lead Collaborative Effort To Help Students, Samantha Kennedy, Nancy Demaris, Abigail Hummell

Libraries Scholarship

Returning after the pandemic, students wellness and mental health is at the forefront of all campus services. After an internal DEI audit, the library realized there were populations that were missing our services, resources, and space. This is a mutual effort that takes the findings of the DEI audit and combines them with the organic efforts of the library’s Access Services department to plan for wellness related services, activities, and information for our population. This presentation will highlight those efforts and showcase how the access services staff and the librarians were able to create a cohesive plan to increase programming …

Meaningful Work When Work Won't Love You Back: Sociological Imagination And Reflective Teaching Practice (Reports From The Field), Andrea Baer

Libraries Scholarship

This essay explores the tension between pursuing meaningful work in instruction librarianship and the realities of working in a society in which many jobs provide little fulfillment or pleasure, or, as the journalist Sarah Jaffe puts it, “Work won’t love you back.” Drawing on a recent conference keynote by Anne Helen Petersen, C. Wright Mills’s conception of sociological imagination, and an ecological model of teacher agency, I propose that one way librarians can sustain their teaching practices and preserve their well-being is by actively investigating how social structures and relationships influence their teaching roles.

Navigating Online Information Spaces With Lateral Reading: Lessons Learned From Two Librarians Working With Students And Educators, Andrea Baer, Daniel G. Kipnis

Libraries Scholarship

As online content’s credibility has gotten harder and harder to evaluate, librarians and other educators have been growing their strategies for teaching online source evaluation. One of those strategies is “lateral reading,” the practice of quickly evaluating a web source by seeing what others on the web say about that source. On the surface, lateral reading is quite simple. However, effective lateral reading often requires complex thinking. How will you search for information about a source? Which search results will you click on and how will you evaluate those sources? How will you decide what you trust and to what …

Teaching Inclusive Citation Through A Library Workshop, Andrea Baer

Libraries Scholarship

In response to calls for greater equity and inclusion in scholarly publishing and in academia in general, many academic instruction librarians are looking to ways to promote inclusive citation practices. Inclusive citation essentially involves citing sources that reflect a greater diversity of voices and perspectives, while being aware of how power and social structures have traditionally influenced what voices are amplified and which are often overlooked. Inclusive citation requires thinking creatively about how and where we search for information, since traditional scholarly practices and common structures and features of many search tools (e.g., citation metrics, relevance rankings) are part of …

Gold Open Access Publishing Rates Spanning 10 Years In Science And Engineering Disciplines At Rowan University, Daniel G. Kipnis, Denise Brush

Libraries Scholarship

Our lighting talk will share data from an analysis of 10 years of Gold open access publications at our university, a rising R2 public University in New Jersey. Our talk will show the increase in Gold Open Access publishing in the sciences of 176% over the ten years and the impact the library Open Access Publishing Fund has had in STEM. In addition, we will share STEM disciplinary differences in publication rates in Gold Open Access. Our talk will conclude by sharing the publishers with the highest rate of publishing Gold Open Access for our Science and Engineering Faculty. Our …

Never Judge A Website By Its Cover: A Mixed-Methods Investigation Into The Effectiveness Of A Tutorial On Lateral Reading, Andrea Baer, Daniel G. Kipnis

Libraries Scholarship

This poster will provide results of an IRB-approved study that assessed the effectiveness of an online tutorial on evaluating sources through lateral reading. Students who used lateral reading strategies were much more likely to accurately identify questionable sources as such. As students gained practice with lateral reading, the accuracy of their evaluations overall improved. Final reflection activities suggest that students' learning deepened as they considered ways that they might revise their evaluation strategies and how they might apply lateral reading strategies in their everyday life. In line with other research on lateral reading, this brief instructional intervention appears to have …

An Investigation Of Gold Open Access Publications Of Stem Faculty At A Public University In The United States (Poster), Daniel G. Kipnis, Denise Brush

Libraries Scholarship

In examining Gold Open Access Publishing at our university we discovered that after a library-sponsored Open Access Publishing Fund was created in 2017 that rates of science and engineering publication went up 176% In Engineering the percentage rate of increase from 2017 was 200%. Of the 46 Gold Open Access publications awarded since fund was created in 2017 33 were in science and engineering. Disciplinary differences in the rates of Gold Open Access publishing are also shared to help librarians focus on which disciplines are more inclined to publish in Gold Open Access journals. Libraries can support faculty with goals …

An Investigation Of Gold Open Access Publications Of Stem Faculty At A Public University In The United States, Daniel G. Kipnis, Denise Brush

Libraries Scholarship

This study investigated Gold Open Access journal publication by science and engineering faculty at the authors’ university from 2013 to 2022. Specifically, did Gold Open Access (OA) by these faculty increase, and did the publication rate vary between disciplines? The authors found that Gold OA publication increased by 176% over the past 10 years, and that an important factor was the Libraries’ creation of an Open Access Publishing Fund in 2017. Disciplinary differences in publication rates were also notable, with life sciences research showing the highest rates of open access publication. An analysis of where our faculty are publishing found …

Flexible Pedagogies For Inclusive Learning: Balancing Pliancy And Structure And Cultivating Cultures Of Care, Andrea Baer

Libraries Scholarship

In this essay, I reflect on flexibility as a concept and as a practice that has informed my teaching, in particular since adapting to online library instruction in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and how flexible pedagogy principles and practices can be catalysts for reflective and inclusive teaching and a culture of care in all teaching contexts.

Diving Below The Surface: A Layered Approach To Teaching Online Source Evaluation Through Lateral And Critical Reading, Andrea Baer, Daniel G. Kipnis

Libraries Scholarship

As online environments have in many ways changed how information (including misinformation) is created and distributed, many educators have recognized a need for teaching new strategies for evaluating online sources for credibility and potential bias. Educators like Mike Caulfield and research groups like the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) have stressed the need for “lateral reading,” a habit of fact-checking when initially evaluating a source. When reading laterally, a person doesn’t spend extensive time initially examining what a source says about itself; instead, they quickly move off of the site in question to look at what others have said about …

Dominant Covid Narratives And Implications For Information And Media Literacy Education In The “Post-Pandemic” United States, Andrea Baer

Libraries Scholarship

Over the past three+ years that COVID-19 has changed everyday life across the globe, the entire world has been tasked with making sense of new, evolving, and often conflicting information, including public message that is often confusing and shaped by political agendas and interests. Dominant narratives about the COVID-19 pandemic illustrate of the complexities and importance of information literacy, and more specifically of critical information literacy, which asks us to interrogate the ways that power and social structure influence what information is created and circulated and how we interact with and respond to it as individuals and collectives. In this …

An Interactive Tutorial: Evaluating Online Sources Through Lateral Reading, Andrea Baer, Daniel G. Kipnis

Libraries Scholarship

Critical evaluation of online sources has become a necessary skill in everyday life. With the prevalence of fake news, pseudoscience, and deep fake videos, how can a person determine if a source is legitimate? While in some cases it’s fairly obvious when a source is suspect, at other times determining a source’s credibility isn’t so straightforward.

Recent research indicates that both university professors and college students have difficulty recognizing misleading online sources that at first glance look reputable. The close reading skills that are key to much of academic work differ from the online evaluation strategies needed when quickly determining …

Exploring Wikipedia As A Tool For Community Building And Teaching And Learning, Timothy R. Dewysockie, Andrea Baer

Libraries Scholarship

Wikipedia has become a widely accepted information source. Wikipedia is also by its very nature centered on community and on building and growing knowledge collectively. However, many are still understandably skeptical of how credible Wikipedia content is, and a gap remains between how frequently we use Wikipedia and how well we understand it. Wikipedia creates an opening for exploring how information is created and circulated, how the information creation process is often negotiated collectively, and how to critically evaluate online information. This session will explore how Wikipedia can be a rich tool for both teaching information literacy and building community …

Small Actions, Grassroots Efforts, And Community Building: Inspiring Fresh Perspectives On Teaching Information Literacy In Uncertain Times, Andrea Baer, Daniel G. Kipnis

Libraries Scholarship

In this workshop two academic librarians will share about their grassroots approach to fostering civic and digital literacies through their work in teaching “lateral reading” and online source evaluation. We will reflect on how a small action, creating an online research guide, was a seed for growing roots - connections and relationships - and for expanding our own teaching and our educational outreach. While we’ll touch on work with lateral reading, our primary focus will be reflecting with fellow librarians on small actions as regenerative responses to burnout and as starting points for more collective engagement in civic literacy education. …

Click Restraint For Critical Online Source Evaluation, Andrea Baer, Daniel G. Kipnis

Libraries Scholarship

We turn to the Internet everyday for information about little things like when a local store opens, as well as about much bigger issues like how to manage critical health conditions or who to vote for. The search results we see first aren’t necessarily the most relevant; they may appear at the top of a list because that site has been visited often or because a company or organization has figured out how to “game the system” through “search engine optimization” (SEO). So how, in an effort to better understand an issue and to find trustworthy information, do we and …

Information Literacy In The Age Of Covid-19: Two Research Guides Implemented At Rowan University Libraries, Benjamin H. Saracco, Andrea Baer, Daniel G. Kipnis

Libraries Scholarship

This lightning talk will provide an overview of two projects faculty librarians undertook in response to the emerging information literacy needs of various stakeholders at Rowan University. The two projects include: a Covid-19 and misinformation online guide and a Covid-19 online research-focused guide for healthcare practitioners.

While these projects were created for different University populations with distinct informational needs (teachers, students, the general public, medical practitioners/researchers), a common theme across these projects was librarians quickly filling information gaps in response to the global Covid-19 pandemic.

Presented at Virtual Academic Library Environment of New Jersey (VALE) virtual conference January 7, 2022.

Case Study: Does Following Updated Best Practices Increase Libguides Usage?, Denise Brush

Libraries Scholarship

This case study describes the work of a library task force led by the author to implement best practices for the design of web-based library guides using the LibGuides platform. The task force’s goal was to increase usage of guides. The task force learned that students were primarily finding library guides through searching on the open web, which has significant implications for guide design. It was hoped that incorporating usability research and search engine optimization (SEO) techniques into guide design would drive more traffic to the guides. Statistics available from the LibGuides platform were compared between the 2020-21 academic year …

Unpacking Lateral Reading Through Practice And Reflection: Metacognitive Strategies Of Critical Source Evaluation, Andrea Baer, Daniel G. Kipnis

Libraries Scholarship

Increasingly librarians are moving away from checklist approaches like CRAAP and advocating for “lateral reading” as a way to quickly evaluate the credibility of online sources. Essentially “lateral reading” is spending little time on a website and more time reading what other sources say about the website in order to quickly evaluate its credibility. While seemingly simple, lateral reading strategies are not always as straightforward as they first appear. Participants will practice lateral reading and consider ways to encourage students to bring metacognitive and critical thinking skills to using lateral reading for source evaluation.

Learning objectives:

1. To become familiar with …

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Trust, Criticality, & The Open Web: Three Approaches To Teaching Lateral Reading, Andrea Baer, Daniel G. Kipnis, Rachel Flynn, Yan He

Libraries Scholarship

Presentation presented at 2021 ACRL conference.

Learning objectives:

• Become familiar with the practice and importance of lateral reading (LR) and the skills and mindsets it involves.
• Become familiar with different approaches to teaching LR and challenges of learning and teaching about it.
• Reflect on the potential relevance and applications of LR in your own teaching context.

Description:

Lateral reading - the process of moving off of a webpage to see what others say about it - has become critical for effectively evaluating online sources. While lateral reading appears simple, teaching it reveals layers of complexity, which include deciding where …