Library and Information Science Commons^™

Along For The Journey: Graduate Student Perceptions Of Research, Alissa Droog, Kari D. Weaver, Frances Brady

Faculty Peer-Reviewed Publications

Graduate student identities and personal lives are heavily tied to their experiences of research, and many struggle to find, understand, and use information for research purposes. Using a drawing exercise rooted in visual research methods combined with semi-structured interviews, a research team in the United States and Canada explored graduate student perceptions of research with 19 participants. Thematic analysis identified six themes: research is abstract; research is an odyssey; social support makes or breaks the student experience; research is an emotional continuum; interplay between identity/values; information is problematic. The study has implications for how librarians support graduate student research.

Partners In Graduate Student Retention: A Library-Led Outreach Collaboration, Ashley R. Lierman

Collaborative Librarianship

Past research has indicated that social connection with their community is an important factor in the retention of graduate students. To help address this need, a Rowan University librarian led an interdepartmental team of collaborators from across campus in developing a series of outreach events specifically for graduate students, which evolved over time to include more and richer programming and opportunities for socialization. This article describes the evidence basis for these events’ inception, the essential components of each iteration of the event and its programming, and the results of holding these events, including both their successes and their failures. Recommendations …

Unpacking The Graduate Student Research Experience: Findings From A Drawing-Based Interview Study, Alissa Droog, Frances Brady, Kari D. Weaver

Faculty Peer-Reviewed Publications

What do graduate students think research is? How do they come to be scholars and how can we as information professionals better support their needs?

Using a drawing exercise rooted in visual research methods (Hartel, 2017; Doucette & Hoffman, 2019; Bryans & Mavin, 2006), a cross-institutional research team in the United States and Canada explore these questions through an interview-based study of graduate student perceptions of research.

At present, the existing body of knowledge examining student perceptions of research strongly focuses on undergraduates (Griffioen, 2019; Insua et al., 2018), leaving a critical gap in theory and pedagogy needed to support …

Scholarly Communications For Librarians: Developing A Mentoring Program To Support Tenure-Track Library Faculty, Anna R. Craft

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

Many academic libraries are increasingly called upon to support and provide training and instruction to graduate students on scholarly communications issues such as open access, copyright, research data, identifying legitimate versus predatory publishing opportunities, and related topics. Many of these areas align with needs librarians face in their own work, especially for those whose jobs offer opportunities (or requirements) to participate in tenure and promotion processes. In order to meet their own professional development and career needs while also preparing to support the specialized needs of graduate students, librarians must keep abreast of the changing scholarly communications landscape and seek …

Librarians In Dissertation Deposit: Infusing An Institutional Ritual With Scholarly Communication Instruction, Roxanne Shirazi, Jill Cirasella

Publications and Research

Most doctoral students are required to produce a dissertation that makes an original contribution to their field of study in order to fulfill their degree requirements. The scholarly nature of this requirement informs how students and faculty approach doctoral research, but universities often treat the dissertations themselves merely as student records, not scholarly contributions. Librarians, however, are uniquely situated to work with graduate students as emerging participants in the scholarly communication ecosystem and help them prepare their dissertations for an outside audience. Librarians have the expertise to advise students with questions regarding copyright, licensing, fair use, and authors’ rights, as …

Big Ideas, Individual Effort: Graduate Student Writing Retreats As Accelerator For Dissertation Completion, Michael Harris

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

The University of Memphis promotes itself as a major, urban, research institution, but it lacks one thing: Carnegie Research 1 classification. Recently, the University has set a goal to achieve such designation by the year 2023 and has created and supported numerous programs to assist with the success, recruitment, and retention of graduate students. In support of these efforts, the offices of the Graduate School, the Center for Writing and Communication, and the University Libraries have an important role to play. Separately, each represents a phase in process towards graduation, but together, they can serve as a powerful, holistic tool …

Tailoring Boot Camps To Graduate Student Needs, Tim Dodge, Adelia Grabowsky, Juliet T. Rumble, Elizabeth J. Weisbrod

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

In an effort to strengthen the academic and career preparedness of graduate students at their public land grant university, library faculty organized a one-day boot camp, featuring workshops focused on research and scholarly productivity skills. Organizers of the boot camp recognized that the needs of their graduate students extended beyond the discipline-specific curricula of graduate programs and the content of library orientations and one-shots. The workshop series they developed, informed by input from graduate students, focused on skills and strategies needed throughout the research lifecycle. Graduate student response to the weekend boot camp was overwhelmingly positive, and attendance has grown …

Assessing Education Needs Of Graduate Students For Data Management, Judith E. Pasek

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

Uncertainty remains as to areas of greatest need for instruction in research data management, and whether perceived needs differ between disciplinary faculty and graduate students. Data sharing requirements of research funders have provided the impetus in recent years for librarians to provide data management services. Instructional approaches ranging from workshops to credit courses are being developed, often without the benefit of first conducting a needs assessment.

A study of education needs in research data management was conducted jointly at the University of Northern Colorado and the University of Wyoming. Graduate students in science-based programs with research thesis or dissertation requirements …

Expanding Campus Peer-To-Peer Teaching & Learning: The Peer Scholars Program, Alexa Carter

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

In response to a growing need for training in advanced research and professional workplace skills, a team of research librarians at the NC State University Libraries have developed a platform to engage and enhance the expertise of early-career researchers on campus. The Peer Scholars Program offers graduate students and postdoctoral scholars a paid practical experience in creating and delivering effective instruction on core and emerging research skills to their peers. Participants are invited to suggest topics for library talks or workshops and partner with research librarians to develop and deliver interactive and engaging sessions in an informal teaching setting. Topics …

You Are Not Alone: Facilitating A Holistic Graduate Academic Experience Through A Dissertation Writing Workshop, Stan Trembach, Wendy Highby, Letha Mellman, Jane Monson, Maggie Shawcross

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

For graduate students, writing a dissertation can be an isolating experience. In 2018, librarians at the University of Northern Colorado (UNC) Libraries collaborated with the Graduate School to organize and host the campus’ first Dissertation Prep and Writing Intensive workshop. Inspired by the examples of Simon Fraser University and Concordia University libraries, we aspired to offer a dissertation workshop that would provide writing support to UNC doctoral students at a crucial stage of their academic journey. Initially, the workshop to students who had completed oral examinations and submitted committee proposals. However, this stringent stage-related requirement was subsequently eased. Over the …

One Workshop, Many Locations: Meeting The Needs Of Both On-Campus And Distance Students, Lisa Becksford

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

The diverse needs of graduate students can be difficult to gauge, and even when their needs are known, it can be difficult to develop programming that meets the needs of graduate students across disciplines and program levels. In spring 2018, a needs assessment survey was conducted by the graduate librarian at a large, comprehensive public university with graduate students at multiple campus locations. Based on respondents’ articulated needs for additional help in data management, research skills, scholarly publishing, and citation management, a workshop series, Research Tools for Graduate Students, was launched in fall 2019. The series sought to provide graduate …

The Effectiveness Of Library Instruction For Graduate/Professional Students: A Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis, Adelia B. Grabowsky, Liza J. Weisbrod

Georgia International Conference on Information Literacy

Library instruction to improve information literacy (IL) is often considered essential only for undergraduates. However, students in graduate/professional programs do not always have the requisite skills needed for graduate level study and research, which suggests they may also benefit from library instruction targeted specifically to graduate students. This study used a systematic review and meta-analysis to assess the effectiveness of library instruction for increasing IL skills and/or knowledge among graduate and professional students. The authors searched seven databases to identify studies published in English between 2000 and 2019 that reported on library instruction for graduate or professional students, and objectively …

Open Access And The Graduate Author: A Dissertation Anxiety Manual, Jill Cirasella, Polly Thistlethwaite

Publications and Research

The process of completing a dissertation is stressful—deadlines are scary, editing is hard, formatting is tricky, and defending is terrifying. (And, of course, postgraduate employment is often uncertain.) Now that dissertations are deposited and distributed electronically, students must perform yet another anxiety-inducing task: deciding whether they want to make their dissertations immediately open access (OA) or, at universities that require OA, coming to terms with openness. For some students, mostly in the humanities and some of the social sciences, who hope to transform their dissertations into books, OA has become a bogeyman, a supposed saboteur of book contracts and destroyer …

The Social Work Librarian And Information Literacy Instruction: A Report On A National Survey In The United States, Margaret Bausman, Sarah Laleman Ward

Publications and Research

As an interdisciplinary profession encompassing macro, mezzo, and micro fields of praxis, well-informed and ethical social work practice necessitates the continual utilization of information literacy skills across a wide and ever-evolving range of information sources and access points. In response to a dearth of scholarship concerning information literacy instruction in social work education, this article reports on an initial endeavor to quantify and describe the nature of information literacy instruction in social work education on a national level in the United States. In addition to a review and discussion of the National Social Work Librarians Survey's descriptive data, this article …

Dissertation To Book: Successful Open Access Outreach To Graduate Students, Diane Gurman, Marta Brunner

Marta Brunner

No abstract provided.

Public Librarian Perceptions : Use Of And Preparedness To Perform Cilf Competencies, Nan Carmack

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

This study surveyed public librarians from American Library Association accredited library and information science programs to ascertain their perceptions regarding their usage of the Online Computer Library Center’s 2015 Competency Index for the Library Field in identifying discrete activities in which librarians engage. The study sought to determine if competency use and feelings of preparedness were affected by the independent variables of type of school attended (traditional or iSchool) and type of library job (youth services, reference, collection management, and administrative). While the interaction of school and job is not significant in reporting perceptions of preparedness, those attending iSchools reported …

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 …

Aligning Library Instruction With The Needs Of Basic Sciences Graduate Students: A Case Study, Donna O'Malley, Frances A. Delwiche

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

Question: How can an existing library instruction program be reconfigured to reach basic sciences graduate students and other patrons missed by curriculum-based instruction?
Setting: The setting is an academic health sciences library that serves both the university and its affiliated teaching hospital.
Methods: The existing program was redesigned to incorporate a series of seven workshops that encompassed the range of information literacy skills that graduate students in the basic sciences need. In developing the new model, the teaching librarians made changes in pedagogy, technology, marketing, and assessment strategies.
Results: Total attendance at the sessions increased substantially in the first 2 …

Il Instruction In The Graduate Classroom, Kelly Heider

Kelly Heider