Library and Information Science Commons^™

Collection Development At Two Armenian University Libraries: A Conversation With Librarians And Faculty, John Carey, D. Aram Donabedian, Arshak Balayan

Publications and Research

In the summer of 2016 two Hunter College librarians, working with a colleague in the Republic of Armenia, conducted an IRB-approved focus group at the American University of Armenia in Yerevan, Armenia. This group drew participants from the libraries and other academic departments of the American University of Armenia as well as Yerevan State University, a large public institution. The discussion attempted to ascertain whether these libraries have devised effective strategies to acquire materials and build collections in the face of the challenges they face (budgetary, linguistic, and sometimes political) and whether faculty at these institutions feel their library’s collection …

The Research 101 Certificate Program At A Community College: Giving All Students The Chance To Learn Basic Information Literacy Skills, Neera Mohess

Publications and Research

Many community college students are ill prepared to do scholarly research. In order to mitigate this, librarians at our campus created the Research 101 Certificate Program in 2016. These workshops provide an access point for any student who wishes to strengthen their information literacy skill set. This essay describes the inception of the program, its pedagogical rationale, administration and participation outcomes. Suggestions for implementation at local institutions are also provided.

Supporting Institutional Objectives By Embedding Mission-Critical Competencies In Credit-Bearing Library Instruction: A Review And Case Study, Derek Stadler, Alexandra Rojas

Publications and Research

This article reviews scholarship of incorporating institutional objectives in academic courses and proposes a method to embed mission-critical competencies in a library instruction course. Few academic institutions focus their mission or core competencies on digital communication. LaGuardia Community College delineates three competencies in its mission: inquiry and problem solving, global learning, and integrative learning. Students exhibit command of these competencies in written, oral, or digital communication. The College defines the digital communication ability as successful collaboration and interaction using online tools, such as discussion boards, either to stage written exchange, or to capture video or oral discussions. Through participation in …

Exploring Innovative Ways To Incorporate The Association Of College And Research Libraries Framework In Graduate Science Teacher Education Eportfolio Projects, Alison Lehner-Quam, Wesley Pitts

Publications and Research

This article investigates ways in which student voice informed design research into information literacy instruction in a year-long graduate science education ePortfolio culminating project. Library and science education faculty partnered in a two-year project to create communities of secondary science education students, in two cohorts, who used the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education to support their own research and reflections into information literacy. The overarching goal was to improve the course design to help science teachers develop their professional competencies in information literacy to conduct research to support their practice. Examination of students’ responses to research experiences …

Getting Your Bearings: Understanding Organizational Culture, Linda Miles, Susanne Markgren

Publications and Research

What do you know about your institution’s organizational culture? How do individuals, collaborative partners, and teams get work done? How are decisions really made? How is change introduced and implemented? How do you know when to go with the flow and when and how to resist or stand your ground? Every workplace is different, but awareness of some common challenges, a set of questions to help librarians interpret what they observe around them and profiles of organizational dynamics in action will support those working to cultivate a professional practice in often complex library environments.

Gathering And Lending Support: Relationships, Linda Miles, Susanne Markgren

Publications and Research

What roles can professional relationships play across a career? How do overlapping and networked relationships help an individual develop professionally, succeed, get ahead, and provide satisfaction and meaning? And what can a librarian do to foster these connections in their own practice? In this chapter, we consider the why, what, who, and how of networking and relationships.

Community College Librarians And The Acrl Framework: Findings From A National Study, Susan T. Wengler, Christine Wolff-Eisenberg

Publications and Research

This study explored community college librarians’ engagement with the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. A national online survey with 1,201 community college librarian respondents reveals limited familiarity with and integration of the Framework into community college instruction to date. Findings indicate an openness to future adoption, as well as substantial interest in targeted professional development and a version of the Framework adapted for community college campuses. These results contribute benchmark instructional data on an understudied section of academic librarianship and add to the growing body of research on how librarians have updated teaching practices in response to …

Validating And Developing The User Engagement Scale In Web-Based Visual Information Searching, Qiong Xu

Publications and Research

Guided by the theoretical frameworks of interactive information searching and user engagement (UE), this study proposed sense discovery (SD) as a UE attribute and suggested a refined four-factor user engagement scale (UES) model for the measurement of users’ psychological involvement in web-based visual information searching. Using a mixed-methods approach based on a survey, this study confirmed the inter-item reliability of the original six-factor UES in three visual contexts—a general visual context, image searching on Google (ISG), and video searching on YouTube (VSY). Principal component analyses (PCA) partially confirmed the internal consistency of the original six UE subscales and suggested conceptual …

Reciprocal On-Site Access: Sharing Information By Sharing Library Spaces, Beth Posner, Dennis Massie, Jennifer Devito, Katharine Haldeman

Publications and Research

On-site reciprocal access to libraries is a valuable benefit of consortial membership. This article details its advantages, offers a sample of some ways in which consortia facilitate such access and reviews the work of the authors, within the SHARES consortium, in this area. Relevant challenges to creating policies, as well as suggestions about how to determine best practices, will also be offered for librarians and their partners to consider and build upon.

Determining Shelving Accuracy Via Sampling In A Community College Library, John P. Delooper, Devika Gonsalves

Publications and Research

During the Fall 2017 semester, staff at the Hudson County Community College (HCCC), Library began to notice that many books listed as available in the catalog were often not being found on the shelves when patrons attempted to retrieve them. This situation puzzled library leadership because HCCC had recently conducted an inventory and removed all missing items from its holdings. To determine the cause of this discrepancy, HCCC staff decided to sample the library’s collection to determine if books were available at the expected locations. From this, the library found that a high percentage of its books were not present …

Sas Data Curation Primer, Qiong Xu

Publications and Research

This primer was created as part of the "Specialized Data Curation" Workshop #3 held at Washington University in St. Louis, MO on November 5-6, 2019. Exploring SAS application and how researchers generated, stored, and shared their SAS data sets, this work summarized the key features of SAS data and explained how to curate SAS data in institutional data repositories. This primer can be used as a manual for research data curators or librarians to document SAS data for the purpose of data preservation and sharing.

Are We Represented As Who We Are? An Assessment Of Library Faculty Online Profiles Within The City University Of New York, Junli Diao

Publications and Research

Academic librarians have been wrestling with faculty status and rank for many decades and their dual identities as professionals and faculty made their identity representations in the online profile environment designed by colleges and universities even more complicated. Misrepresentation or insufficient representation of academic librarians’ identities could lead to jeopardy of their public images within colleges and universities, or even trigger suspicion that academic librarians bring an impediment to academic standards by achieving less or none. Therefore, this study surveyed library faculty’s online profiles within the libraries of the City University of New York and tried to assess whether library …

Four Legs Make A Table: Service And Identity In Academic Librarianship, Maura A. Smale

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Professionalism Reconsidered, Emily Drabinski

Publications and Research

A review of the article "Professionalism Reconsidered" by Bundy & Wasserman.

Using Visual Prompts In Research, Maura A. Smale, Mariana Regalado

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Labour Of Austerity: Absurdity, Performative Resistance, And Cultural Transformation, Nora Almeida

Publications and Research

This essay explores the social-psychic toll of prolonged austerity on academic librarians and the range of strategies that have (or could) serve as tools of resistance. Using a combination of theoretical analysis and autoethnography, I examine the emotional impact of bottomless and invisible labour imposed by austerity and the ways institutions use emotional coercion to promote self-surveillance, meta-work, and hyper-productivity. Following this analysis, I discuss the ways that oppressive institutional cultures silence dissent and absorb common resistance tactics advocated by educators. Finally, I introduce several examples of performance-based resistance projects and explore how creative, personal, and absurd forms of protest …

Libraries And Their Publics In The United States, Maura A. Smale

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Cultivating Belonging: Diversity And Inclusion Initiatives At The Leonard Lief Library, Lehman College--Cuny, Joan Jocson-Singh, Alison Lehner-Quam, Rebecca Arzola

Publications and Research

For the library profession, diversity and inclusion have increasingly become part and parcel of upholding the fundamental values that librarianship promotes. As the ACRL Diversity Standards state:

"Diversity is an essential component of any civil soci- ety. It is more than a moral imperative; it is a global necessity. Everyone can benefit from diversity, and diverse populations need to be supported so they can reach their full potential for themselves and their communities."*

For librarians at the Leonard Lief Library, Lehman College, a new Diversity and Inclusion Working Group (DIWG) was created in early 2018 to foster and cultivate an …