Library and Information Science Commons^™

When ‘Non-Instructional’ Librarians Teach: Navigating Faculty Status And Teaching Portfolios, Cailean Cooney, Wanett I. Clyde, Kel R. Karpinski, Junior R. Tidal, Nanette Johnson

Publications and Research

This article shares individual and collective experiences from five faculty ranked librarians with roles outside of formal instruction who are employed at an academic institution in the United States, and their approach to developing and embracing a teacher identity in the context of their professional trajectory. The article explores how the authors prepared to be evaluated against traditional classroom teaching for promotion by forming a cohort-based group to support “noninstructional” librarians to create a teaching portfolio, and how they approached teaching from liminal and, at times, tenuous positions and career stages. Authors conclude that the process challenged and expanded their …

The Information Literacy Class As Theatrical Performance: A Qualitative Study Of Academic Librarians’ Understanding Of Their Teacher Identity, Mark Aaron Polger

Publications and Research

This qualitative study examines how academic librarians understand, conceptualize, and describe their teacher identity. The role of the academic librarian has greatly changed due to the advent of information technology. Traditionally, they were generalists, who were responsible for selecting and maintaining library collections. Academic librarian roles have evolved into web developers, information literacy (IL) instructors, emerging technology innovators, marketing and outreach coordinators, open education resources (OER) advocates, and scholarly communication experts. This research investigates the academic librarian as teacher phenomenon, how they describe their professional identity as teachers, the skills, knowledge, and competencies they teach, and their beliefs of how …

Possible Futures For Colonial Collecting Institutions: A Study Of Historical Societies In The United States, Jen Hoyer

Publications and Research

This article explores how collecting institutions with deeply colonial roots can move into a decolonial future existence, through an in-depth study of historical societies in the United States. Examining their historic roots in colonialism of the United States and the persistence of these colonial identities in spite of a variety of evolutionary trends over the 20th century, this article asks: what decolonial possibilities exist for their future? If institutional shifts have not undone the colonial identities of some collecting institutions, what can? Turning to Sarah Ahmed’s theory on queer use and Saidiya Hartman’s method of critical fabulation, I suggest practical …

Review Of The Book Denial Of Genocides In The Twenty-First Century, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Review of the book Denial of Genocides in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Bedross Der Matossian.

Making Oer Sustainable In The Library: Building Community Through Professional Development For Librarians, Joanna Thompson, Joshua Peach

Publications and Research

While open educational resources (OER) programs are often situated in university and college libraries, librarians come to the practice with different levels of exposure and knowledge. At the New York City College of Technology (City Tech) library, we attempted to bridge this gap by offering a paid training for all full-time librarians at the college. Our goal for the training was to integrate the philosophy of open educational resources and its approaches into librarians’ everyday work. This article outlines the rationale for our approach to professional development, the program design, participant feedback, and future directions.

The Scholarship Of Rock Music: Knowledge Mapping Through Bibliography, Monica Berger

Publications and Research

Scholarship on rock and popular music has grown dramatically in volume and methodological variety and complexity including extensive use of interdisciplinary approaches. There currently is no comprehensive resource for scholars and educators to explore monographic scholarly literature on rock. I will showcase a new annotated bibliography, with a focus on disciplinarity and methodology, which provides a lens into how this scholarly discourse has evolved. This bibliography also makes visible broader trends regarding research topics in rock and popular music. This project will be a resource to academics and other authors, faculty designing and updating curricula, and librarians interested in building …

Continuing Education And Data Training Initiatives Are Needed To Positively Impact Academic Librarians Providing Data Services, Nandi Prince

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Importance Of An Onboarding Process For Librarian Success, Sonali Sugrim

Publications and Research

Starting a new job comes with its unique challenges. New librarians are expected to develop an understanding of their roles, often with no guidance. For assorted reasons, including staffing, time, and lack of planning, many libraries do not have an onboarding process. This article explores from a librarian’s perspective the key ingredients needed when starting a new job in this hybrid environment, with a focus on the importance of an onboarding process that prioritizes effective communication, documentation of institutional knowledge, and the long-term success of librarians. This article is a call for library leadership to do more to ensure librarians …

How Granular Do You Want To Go? Analyizing Marcxml Data With Python, Rebecca Hyams

Publications and Research

While Alma Analytics can be quite powerful, it has its limits when it comes to providing answers to complex questions about bibliographic and holdings records. For those of us that do work that includes maintaining and enhancing records, having good quality data is vital in making informed decisions on the best way forward. You may find you want to know things like which additional identifiers are present in the record to help with deduplication efforts, or how many records have a particular formatting issue that needs addressing. The data is already there in the record and can be accessed via …

Modern Impressions: Getting To Know Your Library Website Users, Robin Naughton

Publications and Research

Academic library websites need to support a variety of users (student, faculty, staff, administrator, alumni, etc.) with intellectual pursuits related to research, teaching, and learning, in addition to being user-friendly, valuable and informative. Although the CUNY Queens College Library (QCL) website has been redesigned multiple times, there has not been a formal user research study of the website and its users to inform the redesign. Taking a user-centered approach, specifically the user-centered design (UCD) methodology, this study explores users of an urban academic library website in the United States through the use of triangulation, a mixed-methods approach that includes user …

The Ultimate Privacy Field Guide: A Workbook Of Best Practices, Junior Tidal

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

What’S Missing? The Role Of Community Colleges In Building A More Inclusive Institutional Repository Landscape, Megan Wacha, Michael Kirby, Jean Amaral, Elizabeth Jardine, Meagan Lacy, Kate Lyons

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Toporadio: Mapping Research On Spanish-Languageradio In The United States, Eric Silberberg

Publications and Research

This article analyzes the construction of TopoRadio (toporadio.org), an interactive map that showcases publications and archives about Spanish-language radio in the U.S. The map aims to promote a more inclusive and comprehensive representation of U.S. radio history by improving the visibility of contributions from Latinx broadcasters. The article addresses how map-making historically suppressed Spanish-language radio programs and proposes using critical cartography as a framework for mapping back this history. The technical elements of TopoRadio, including publication selection criteria, metadata design, geocoding process, and the appraisal of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software, are described to provide scholars with a reproducible method …

Where Do Community College Students Go For Their Reference Management Needs: Findings From A Survey Studymanagement Needs: Findings From A Survey Study, Ajatshatru Pathak, Sarah Johnson

Publications and Research

This research article reports the findings of a survey that was conducted at two community
colleges affiliated with a large public university system in the Northeast of the United States. A
survey was to explore community college students’ citation management help- seeking habits.
Findings suggest that respondents were more likely to utilize Purdue University’s Online Writing
Lab (OWL) website for reference management help than other resources. The results also show
the impact of various factors (i.e., institution, academic level, undergraduate class level, field of
study, age, gender, race/ethnicity, and user type) on students’ citation help -seeking practices.
Significant statistical associations …

Fostering Epistemic Equality With Library-Based Publishing In The Global South, Monica Berger

Publications and Research

This talk will consider the marginalization of scholars and other stakeholders in the Global South and how local publishing infrastructure is critical to recalibrating imbalances. The Latin American ethos and practice of bibliodiversity, or scholarly self-determination, is a precondition for the decolonialization of knowledge. Accordingly, predatory publishing is minimal in Latin America which has its own publishing infrastructures. Library publishing, which supports bibliodiversity, represents an important path towards much needed free to authors or diamond open access. Librarians play a critical role in educating editors and fostering publishing best practices.

A Genealogy Of Open, Betsy Yoon

Publications and Research

The term open has become a familiar part of library and education practice and discourse, with open source software being a common referent. However, the conditions surrounding the emergence of the open source movement are not well understood within librarianship. After identifying capitalism and neoliberalism as structures that shape library and open practice, this article contextualizes the term open by delineating the discursive struggle within the free software movement that led to the emergence of the open source movement. An understanding of the genealogy of open can lend clarity to many of the contradictions that have been grappled with in …

Effects Of Library Workshop Attendance And Library Website Visit Frequency On Health Professions Students’ Libguides Awareness, John Carey, Ajatshatru Pathak, Sarah C. Johnson

Publications and Research

This research article examines data from an in-person 2017 survey on LibGuides usage, perceptions, and awareness of health professions students seeking bachelor and graduate level degrees. Almost 45% (n=20, N=45) of participants who visited the library’s website at least once per week indicated awareness of library-created LibGuides. Nearly 90% (n=8, N=9) of health professions students who had not visited the library’s website were unaware of the guides. The statistical analysis shows significant associations between various variables (academic level, library workshop attendance, research guide type usage, research guide page usage) and library guide awareness. The data did not reveal any significant …

Drying Our Library’S Libguides-Based Webpage By Introducing Vue.Js, Mark E. Eaton

Publications and Research

At the Kingsborough Community College library, we recently decided to bring the library’s website more in line with DRY principles (Don’t Repeat Yourself). We felt we this could improve the site by creating more concise and maintainable code. DRYer code would be easier to read, understand and edit. We adopted the Vue.js framework in order to replace repetitive, hand-coded dropdown menus with programmatically generated markup. Using Vue allowed us to greatly simplify the HTML documents, while also improving maintainability.

Taking Advantage Of Opportunities For Informal Leadership, Linda Miles, Susanne Markgren

Publications and Research

We contend that informal leadership (IL)—the type that does not come from an official title or decree—not only helps our organizations function, it can be vital in helping mid-career academic librarians grow and succeed, and such pursuits should be encouraged and supported no matter where they emerge within an organizational structure. We aim to define and explore IL and provide strategies for mid-career librarians who may want to identify, seek out, and step into IL opportunities. We begin our discussion by considering concepts emerging from the literature on leaders and leadership in general and what it means to lead when …

Pulling It All Together: Teaching Genre, Disciplinary And Career Literacies, And The Framework For Information Literacy In An Associate Degree Capstone Course, Linda Miles, Elisabeth Tappeiner

Publications and Research

We team teach a semester-long credit-bearing information literacy course for urban community college students in New York City’s South Bronx. It is a capstone course, designed to support students at the end of their first two years of college as they consider the next stage in their own development, be that transferring to a four-year institution or entering the workforce. For this course, we have constructed an approach to critical reading that combines explicit exploration of academic and disciplinary genres with an investigation into the processes of knowledge production and communication shared by the individuals who produce them. This chapter …

Working Towards Promotion To Full Professor: Strategies, Time Management, And Habits For Academic Librarian Mothers, Marta Bladek

Publications and Research

After briefly sharing my experience as an academic librarian mother, the chapter places it within the larger context of academia in which women, especially mothers, lag behind men in attaining the full professor rank. It then outlines the strategies that have enabled me to gradually make progress towards promotion. The chapter discusses strategies to use at the institutional level (familiarity with local requirements, personnel process and related trainings, as well as the availability of leaves and grants), at the departmental level (workflow adjustments, scheduling arrangements, and strategic choice of projects and service commitments), and then at the individual/personal level (seeking …

Writing The History Of Spanish Studies At Hunter College: A Case Study Of Original Archival Research By Undergraduate Students, Jennifer Newman, María Hernández-Ojeda

Publications and Research

This essay, a collaboration between an English and humanities librarian (Newman) and a professor of Spanish language and literature (Hernández-Ojeda), describes original archival research performed in an undergraduate course on early-twentieth-century Spanish literature in the fall of 2019. In this course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE), students engaged in both the reading and writing of institutional history at Hunter College-CUNY, using material from Hunter’s Archives along with other primary and secondary sources. Collaborating in research teams, the undergraduate scholars investigated topics related to Spanish studies at the college during the period covered by the course.

Amplifying Civil Rights Collections With Oral Histories: A Collaboration With Alumni At Queens College, City University Of New York, Annie E. Tummino, Victoria Fernandez

Publications and Research

Representing a shift in archival methods, oral history is increasingly used alongside more traditional methods of documentation to capture institutional and community histories. In this article, the authors demonstrate how the Student Help Lived Experience Project at the Queens College Library’s Special Collections and Archives (SCA) provided a vital supplement to more traditional methods of archival documentation. SCA was able to leverage resources provided by a partnering organization and a newly established graduate fellowship to bolster its relationship with other entities on campus and to engage alumni in a participatory, collaborative effort that centered their knowledge and interests. This article …

We Didn’T Know: How A Mid-Career Research Project Taught Us About Disability, Advocacy, And Ourselves, Lee Ann Fullington, Jill Cirasella

Publications and Research

We—Lee Ann and Jill—are mid-career faculty librarians at different campuses of the City University of New York (CUNY), and we are both hard of hearing. Lee Ann has bilateral hearing loss and uses two hearing aids; Jill has single-sided hearing loss and uses only one. However, even with hearing aids, which do not restore normal hearing, our hearing loss complicates our lives at work and in the broader world. This chapter describes how we found community in each other, how our conversations about hearing loss led to a mid-career research collaboration, and how that collaboration launched us into a larger …

Improving A Library Faq: Assessment And Reflection Of The First Year’S Use, Vanessa Arce, Michelle Ehrenpreis

Publications and Research

In 2020, the Leonard Lief Library created a searchable online knowledge base (FAQs) as a complement to virtual reference during the library’s pandemic-related closure. One year of search query data was used to assess the online knowledge base. This paper discusses the assessment’s findings and planned improvements to the FAQs.

A content analysis of user queries revealed what users are seeking in the knowledge base. The study examined the actions taken by users after conducting a search to determine the knowledge base’s success rate.

The knowledge base was successful in answering user questions almost half of the time. The top …

What’S Art Got To Do With Politics? Show Me The Evidence, Nandi Prince

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Insights: Qualitative Study To Reevaluate And Redesign Online Learning Self-Guided Tools For English First Year Writers Learning Self-Guided Tools For English First Year Writers, Nandi Prince

Publications and Research

The library faculty teaches approximately three hundred one-time instructional classes per year. This study explored the role of the library instructor in support of serving the needs of first-year writers (FYW) in a discourse community (DC). The English faculty teach English Composition I, the FYW develop their writing skills in a community with shared goals and an established means of communicating. This qualitative study explored: (1) in-depth experiences of the English faculty during library one-time instructional classes; (2) their perceptions of what students need most, in the new curriculum; (3) new findings that would guide the design of digital tools …