Library and Information Science Commons^™

The Potential Of Industry Standards In Undergraduate Education, Heather A. Howard, Margaret Phillips, Alyson Vaaler, David Hubbard

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Industry standards have a significant impact on business as a means to eliminate waste, reduce costs, market products (e.g., for quality, safety, interoperability) and lessen liability (Thompson, 2011). Consequently, an understanding and the ability to use standards, agreed upon practices among interested or vested parties, is a critical workplace competency for those engaged in business and industry. To have a workforce competent in the use of standards, higher education curricula must be developed to integrate standards education at appropriate points within the curriculum. Despite the importance of standards, they are not universally integrated into the college and university curricula. Given …

Making Room For Change: Rightsizing Psu’S Axe Library Serials Collection, Barbara M. Pope

Kansas Library Association College and University Libraries Section Proceedings

Print serials collection development has long been a traditional role of academic librarians. However, in the last 20 years, academic libraries’ print serials ownership has declined and online access has begun to take its place, both partially due to concerns with flat or declining budgets as well as lack of space and the need to repurpose this limited space. Pittsburg State University’s Axe Library faces the challenge of balancing its print and electronic serials collections at a university whose programs sometimes do not draw enough on library resources. In an effort to create a meaningful discovery experience for the university …

The Impact Of Information Literacy Instruction On Student Success: A Multi-Institutional Investigation And Analysis, Joni Blake, Melissa Bowles-Terry, N. Shirlene Pearson, Zoltan Szentkiralyi

Fondren Library Research

The GWLA Student Learning Outcomes task force analyzed the data from over 42,000 first-time, first-year freshmen and over 1700 distinct courses from 12 research institutions to determine the impact(s) of information literacy instruction integrated into course curriculum on several student success measures.

Key findings include:

• Student retention rates are higher for those students whose courses include an information literacy instruction component.
• On average, First-Year GPA for students whose courses included information literacy instruction was higher than the GPA of students whose courses did not.
• Students exposed to library instruction interactions successfully completed 1.8 more credit hours per year than their …

Faculty Perceptions Of Teaching Information Literacy To First-Year Students: A Phenomenographic Study, Lorna M. Dawes

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

This study examines faculty perceptions of teaching information literacy and explores the influence of these perceptions on pedagogy. The study adopted an inductive phenomenographic approach, using 24 semi-structured interviews with faculty teaching first-year courses at an American public research university. The results of the study reveal four qualitative ways in which faculty experience teaching information use to first year students that vary within three themes of expanding awareness. The resulting outcome space revealed that faculty had two distinct conceptions of teaching information literacy: (1) Teaching to produce experienced consumers of information, and (2) Teaching to cultivate intelligent participants in discourse …

Leveraging Resources Across Units And Universities To Address Academic Literacies And Research Skills In Ontario Graduate Students, Melanie Mills, Elan Paulson

Western Libraries Presentations

Student2Scholar (S2S) is a fully online and open course that aims to teach academic literacies and research skills to social science graduate students. Set to launch in December 2015, S2S was conceived of and created by a diverse and distributed team of academic librarians, university staff, and graduate students from three Ontario Universities: Western, the University of Toronto, and Queen’s. Members of the project team brought with them varying degrees of experience and expertise across a range of disciplinary and teaching and learning backgrounds, including: adult education, information literacy, and online learning (to name only a few).

S2S serves as …

“I Am More Productive In The Library Because It’S Quiet”: Commuter Students In The College Library, Mariana Regalado, Maura A. Smale

Publications and Research

This article discusses commuter students’ experiences with the academic library, drawn from a qualitative study at the City University of New York. Undergraduates at six community and baccalaureate colleges were interviewed to explore how they fit schoolwork into their days, and the challenges and opportunities they encountered. Students identified physical and environmental features that informed their ability to successfully engage in academic work in the library. They valued the library as a distraction-free place for academic work, in contrast to the constraints they experienced in other places—including in their homes and on the commute.

Assessment In Academic Libraries, Gregory Smith

Gregory A. Smith

Academic library assessment has a rich history, its roots being traceable to a time when today’s information technologies were beyond the realm of imagination. The field has developed at an accelerating pace for more than 40 years, fueled by scholarly and creative output within and beyond the field of library/information science. Prevailing economic, political, and technological conditions have already thrust assessment into the mainstream of academic library operations around the world, and this trend is unlikely to be reversed. In the past 20 years, advocates for library assessment have developed new venues for intellectual exchange, launching conferences and journals focused …

The Impact Of Library Resource Utilization On Undergraduate Students' Academic Performance: A Propensity Score Matching Design, Felly Chiteng Kot, Jennifer Jones

University Library Faculty Publications

This study uses three cohorts of first-time, full-time undergraduate students (N=8,652) at a large, metropolitan, public research university to examine the impact of student use of three library resources (workstations, study rooms, and research clinics) on academic performance. To deal with self-selection bias and estimate this impact more accurately, we used propensity score matching. Using this unique approach allowed us to construct treatment and control groups with similar background characteristics. We found that using a given library resource was associated with a small, but also meaningful, gain in first-term grade point average, net of other factors.

Evaluating An Instruction Program With Various Assessment Measures, Sarah Gewirtz

Libraries Staff Publications

Purpose: This paper demonstrates how the author’s library was able to enhance the collaborative learning and teaching environment, with secondary goals to improve teaching effectiveness and increase sharing among librarians of ideas and techniques used in First Year Student sessions.

Design/methodology/approach: This paper describes the various measures of assessment (peer-to-peer, student feedback and self-reflection) that the College of St. Benedict (CSB) and St. John’s University (SJU) Libraries implemented in 2011. The methods were used to improve teaching by listening to peers, getting feedback from students and by also doing self-reflection. Many librarians were able to make changes that were beneficial …

Living The Future 2012: Educational Role Of Libraries, Jennifer L. Fabbi, Jeanne Brown, Anne E. Zald, Steven Hoover

Library Faculty Presentations

No abstract provided.

Standards For Libraries In Higher Education, Patricia A. Iannuzzi, Tom Abbott, Jeanne Brown, Susan Gibbons, Lynne King, Sharon Mccaslin, Mary Reichel, Joan Ruelle, Lisa Stillwell, Mary Jane Petrowski, Lori Goetsch

Library Faculty Publications

The Standards for Libraries in Higher Education are designed to guide academic libraries in advancing and sustaining their role as partners in educating students, achieving their institutions’ missions, and positioning libraries as leaders in assessment and continuous improvement on their campuses. Libraries must demonstrate their value and document their contributions to overall institutional effectiveness and be prepared to address changes in higher education. These Standards were developed through study and consideration of new and emerging issues and trends in libraries, higher education, and accrediting practices. These Standards differ from previous versions by articulating expectations for library contributions to institutional effectiveness. …