Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Virtual Reference Amid Covid-19 Campus Closure: A Case Study And Assessment, Maureen Garvey

Publications and Research

Purpose – This case study was conducted to assess and make changes to the consortial virtual reference service for the remainder of the period of fully virtual reference (campus closure); a second objective was to consider implications for service design and delivery upon the eventual return to the physical campus.

Design/methodology/approach – This paper begins by introducing the institution, reference practices prior to the pandemic and the changes to reference service necessitated by the campus closure. After a literature review of material related to reference and the pandemic, several years of virtual reference service data are analyzed.

Findings – The …

A Lexical And Syntactic Study Of Research Article Titles In Library Science And Scientometrics, Junli Diao

Publications and Research

Title of a research article is an abstract of the abstract. Titles play a decisive role in convincing readers at first sight whether articles are worth reading or not. Not only do research article titles show how carefully words are chosen by authors, but also reflect disciplinary differences in terms of title words and structure between hard sciences and soft sciences. This study examined the lexical density and syntactic structure of 690 research article titles chosen from five Library Science and Scientometrics journals, aiming to reveal disciplinary differences. The result suggested both Library Science and Scientometrics have almost the same …

A Preliminary Investigation Of Technical Services Librarians’ Contributions To Library Guides In Academic Libraries, Junli Diao

Publications and Research

Online library guides are one of the bridges that librarians build to connect users to available resources and services. Since the time when library guides were conceived in the pamphlets and book lists of the early days, a historical brand bearing public and instructional services librarians’ merit and reputation has been watermarked in their presentation. In the internet age, have technical services librarians also played a role in contributing to library guides in academic libraries to assist students’ learning and faculty teaching? If so, do technical services librarians who are working as faculty tend to produce more library guides than …

Information Literacy Session Attendance And Library Website Visit Frequency: Impacts On Awareness Of Libguides Among Undergraduate And Graduate Health Professions Students At An Urban Campus, John Carey, Ajatshatru Pathak, Sarah C. Johnson

Publications and Research

Public, large, non-residential four-year and master’s college with separate Health Professions Library (HPL) serving 1,300+ health professions students. The Hunter College Libraries offer over 180 LibGuides via the “Research Guides” link on library’s home page. HPL librarians teach one-shot and other information literacy (IL) sessions for students.

Amplifying Collections With Oral Histories In A Virtual World: The Student Help Lived Experience Project At Queens College Cuny, Annie E. Tummino, Victoria Fernandez

Publications and Research

In response to the challenges brought on by the onset of the pandemic, the Queens College Special Collection and Archives (SCA) created the “Student Help: Lived Experience” student fellowship, designed to be completely remote. The project is an initiative to further document the activities of Queens College students who participated in both the Virginia and South Jamaica Student Help Projects in the early to mid-1960s. The Virginia Student Help Project was an intensive education effort during the summer of 1963 in Prince Edward County, Virginia where public schools were closed for five years in massive resistance to integration. The Jamaica …

Student Well-Being Matters: Academic Library Support For The Whole Student, Marta Bladek

Publications and Research

In response to a marked increase in the prevalence and severity of mental health problems among college students over the last decade, colleges and universities have been expanding their well-being initiatives and programs. No longer limited to health services departments, the support of student well-being has been taken up by multiple campus units, including academic libraries. As well-being has been shown to impact academic outcomes, the well-being initiatives libraries develop fit in with their commitment to enhance learning and student educational experience overall. A comprehensive review of wellness interventions in academic libraries, this article presents findings on student well-being and …

What Is A Podcast?, Junior Tidal

Publications and Research

Podcasting: A Practical Guide guides librarians through the process of creating a podcast. It will help librarians digitally record their podcasts, which can highlight library collections, connect with patrons, provide library instruction, and market library services across the Internet.

Highlights include

• Step-by-step guidance for how to record a podcast specifically tailored for libraries and librarians.
• Specifications on what kind of equipment, software, and hardware, is necessary to record their own episodes.
• Pre-production techniques including script writing, storyboard creation, and how to find guests will be explored.
• Coverage of the post-production stage including, audio editing, incorporating music and effects, and mixing …

No Publication Favelas! Latin America's Vision For Open Access, Monica Berger

Publications and Research

Open access was intended to be the great equalizer but its promise has not come to fruition in many lower-income countries of the Global South. Under-resourcing is only one of the many reasons why these scholars and publishers are marginalized. In order to examine inequality in our global scholarly communications system, we can compare a negative and a positive outgrowth of this imbalance. Predatory publishing represents a a weak imitation of traditional, commercial journal publishing. In contrast, Latin America’s community-based, quality scholarly infrastructure is anti-colonial. It can be argued that Latin America’s publishing infrastructure represents one solution to predatory publishing. …

How Social Work Librarians Connect Social Justice To Information Literacy., Stephen Maher, Carin Graves, Sarah C. Johnson

Publications and Research

In this paper we, as members of the ACRL EBSS Social Work Committee,1 share our experience of developing a companion document to the ACRL Framework.2 Our overarching goal of this project is to clearly demonstrate the overlap between the ACRL Framework and social work’s educational competencies professional ethics. Over the course of this two-year project, we developed a fuller understanding of how social justice—and its corresponding concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion—exist in both professions.

Intimacy And Interruption In Remote Library Instruction, Leila Walker

Publications and Research

Sharing our spaces in synchronous instruction sessions does more than just show the places where research occurs. It creates an opportunity for students to see our vulnerabilities

Weeding Into Outreach: A Case Study Using An Urban Community College’S Reserve Collection, Jeffrey Delgado

Urban Library Journal

Urban Community colleges face a unique constraint on students. The price of textbooks has skyrocketed in recent years, forcing our students to incorporate additional expenses in order to gain access to class material. College libraries play a crucial role in facilitating students with access to reserve collections, however, library policies do not always assist students in the most practical way. Using a reserve collection that was overloaded with copies and older editions of popular textbooks titles, this case study illustrates how weeding a reserve collection can facilitate an event where students can take copies of textbooks for themselves. Moreover, this …

Innovative Social Work Field Placements In Public Libraries, Sarah C. Johnson

Publications and Research

While the collaborative trend among professional social workers and librarians has accumulated much-deserved attention for several years, literature about social work students partnering with public libraries is only beginning to emerge. In fact, there are at least 100 branches that host social work students, yet academic literature examining the scope of these collaborations is sparse. Student placements do exist at Canadian and Australian libraries, yet the current research focuses on the bulk of known partnerships based in the United States. This paper includes information on the prevalence, nature, and fit of social work education and public library partnerships, garnered from …

An “Anti-Handbook Handbook” For Unexpected Changes In A Library Organization, Stephanie M. Margolin, Malin Abrahamsson

Publications and Research

Library employees face countless changes, big and small, in their workplaces every day: not only the COVID-19 pandemic but also such commonplace events as open positions, renovations, budget cuts, and new library systems. No single handbook can anticipate all the changing needs. This case study discusses how one particular library responded, in a specific time and context. The librarians and staff created a model of self-leadership in an effort to articulate a shared purpose and to establish cohesion and well-being in a group that was sometimes divided and stressed. Lessons learned include the importance of ways of thinking, rather than …

Improving College Students’ Fact-Checking Strategies Through Lateral Reading Instruction In A General Education Civics Course, Jessica E. Brodsky, Patricia J. Brooks, Donna Scimeca, Ralitsa Todorova, Peter Galati, Michael Batson, Robert Grosso, Michael Matthews, Victor Miller, Michael Caulfeld

Publications and Research

College students lack fact-checking skills, which may lead them to accept information at face value. We report findings from an institution participating in the Digital Polarization Initiative (DPI), a national effort to teach students lateral reading strategies used by expert fact-checkers to verify online information. Lateral reading requires users to leave the information (website) to find out whether someone has already fact-checked the claim, identify the original source, or learn more about the individuals or organizations making the claim. Instructor-matched sections of a general education civics course implemented the DPI curriculum (N=136 students) or provided business-as-usual civics instruction (N=94 students). …

On The Future Of Ijsl: Trans-Collaboration And How To Overcome The Structural Constraints On Knowledge Production, Distribution And Dissemination, José Del Valle

Publications and Research

In this essay, using as a point of departure his dilemma to accept or not the invitation to be a member of IJSL’s Editorial Board, del Valle discusses the limitations that academic publishing places on scholars in the humanities and interpretive social sciences: their choice of objects and analytical protocols, and the modes of distribution and dissemination of their production. The constraints imposed by highly bureaucratized universities and publishing companies are set against the intellectual imperative to build academic fields grounded in equality and inclusion. The essay concludes with some thinly drawn goals towards more dynamic trans-collaborative forms of knowledge …

Making Room For Tbd: Adapting Library Websites During A Pandemic, Sarah B. Cohn, Rebecca Hyams

Publications and Research

The article describes different academic libraries' responses to the pandemic through their websites, as their site administrators reflect on the changes that occurred during an evolving emergency situation and an anything but-normal start to a new academic year. It mentions that the situation in the New York City area was rapidly deteriorating, as an increasing number of COVID-19 cases were confirmed.

Is “Just Googling It” Good Enough For First-Year Students?, Maureen Richards

Publications and Research

This study analyzes citations by first-year students to determine what content they were citing and whether it was available through the open web or the library. Examining the role of these two places as content providers for academic work fills a gap in the literature. Most of the cited works were available through the library and the open web. As the line between content providers continues to blur, these results can help academic libraries prioritize what to teach students about information literacy, where to focus collection development efforts and how to promote the discovery of library resources.

Bibliodiversity At The Centre: Decolonizing Open Access, Monica Berger

Publications and Research

The promise of open access for the global South has not been fully met. Publishing is dominated by Northern publishers who disadvantage Southern authors through platform capitalism and open access models requiring article processing charges to publish. The South can reclaim and decolonize open access, nurturing scholarly communities, by employing bibliodiversity, a sustainable, anticolonial ethos and practice developed in Latin America. Self-determination and locality are at the core of bibliodiversity which rejects the domination of international, English-language journal publishing. As articulated by the Jussieu Call, varied scholarly community-based, non-profit, and sustainable models for open access are integral to bibliodiversity as …

Cloudy Days, Silver Linings: Pandemic-Era Library Research Workshops For English 110 Students, Max Thorn

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Delivering Online Information Literacy Classes Via A Gps Mindset, Madeline Ruggiero

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

3-2-1-Action: Transitioning To Teaching Online And Synchronously In A 7 Week Information Literacy Class, Mark Aaron Polger

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Advocating For Social Justice And Diverse Voices In The Virtual World, Annie E. Tummino, Jo-Ann Wong

Publications and Research

Queens Memory is a local community archiving and oral history project, co-administered by Queens Public Library and Queens College, CUNY. Due to COVID-19 safety protocols, all projects and programs were required to move to a virtual setting. While under these restricted measures, members from both institutions found an opportunity to embark on a collaborative virtual event series for our respective library communities. The programs covered current events and their historical contexts, social justice, and creating positive social change. Key ingredients fueling the success of this initiative included building relationships with multiple co-sponsors; bringing together multigenerational, diverse panelists; and creative use …

Understanding The Roles Of Public Libraries And Digital Exclusion Through Critical Race Theory: An Exploratory Study Of People Of Color In California Affected By The Digital Divide And The Pandemic, Raymond Pun

Urban Library Journal

With the arrival of COVID-19, public libraries have been closed or partially re-opened in various phases. This qualitative study explores the lived experiences of select library users in California, particularly people of color who experience digital exclusion, and how they use their public libraries prior to and during the pandemic. The study is guided by two research questions: 1. What are the barriers in using public libraries’ technology resources experienced by patrons of color before and during the pandemic? 2. What are their perspectives, purposes, and beliefs in using technologies in the public library before and during the pandemic? Using …

A Reflection On The Dialectical Relationship Of Librarian | Teacher: The Need For Pedagogical Training In Core Mlis Curriculum, Melanie C. Locay

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis maps a shift in my understanding of knowledge production and teaching and learning. Teaching has a critical role in Librarianship, yet there is a glaring absence of teacher training across MLIS programs. Drawing from established literature on Critical Pedagogical theory, multiple logics of inquiry, and Critical Librarianship we can adopt practices of teaching and learning that elevate marginalized voices and center reflexive theory. This thesis includes a scope of applications of pedagogical theory to LIS practice and identifies an immediate need for an overhaul of the Master’s in Library and Information Sciences core curricula.

Neoliberalism And Public Library Policy In Ireland, 1998–2011: From The First Government Policy Document To The First General Election After The Great Recession, Maureen Garvey

Publications and Research

This article discusses the influence of neoliberal ideology on public libraries in Ireland, from the first government policy document published in 1998 to the first election after the recession in 2011. The context of the rise in importance of the idea of information and the parallel acceptance of the principles of the free market for providing public services are examined. The Irish government policy documents from the period are analyzed. A critical awareness of these changes is needed in the library and information science field to recognize and oppose policies that are detrimental to the public provision of a library …

Working Remotely, Working Effectively: Improving Collection Access During A Global Pandemic, Colleen Bradley-Sanders

Publications and Research

This article looks at how one college archive responded to the shutdown of its campus in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Archivist and Associate Archivist worked together to develop work assignments that could be done from home. While collection processing was halted, the tasks assigned to staff all aimed to improve informational access to the collections, through an expanded effort to convert PDF finding aids to EAD for placement in an ArchivesSpace site, a project to create a searchable listing of collections that includes a brief description of content and links to finding aids, and planning for digitization of …

Students And Parents: How Academic Libraries Serve A Growing Population, Marta Bladek

Publications and Research

In recognition of the critical role libraries play in the educational lives of parenting students, there has been a noticeable trend in academic libraries to offer services and spaces for students and their children. This article reviews recent LIS literature on student parent initiatives in academic libraries, with the emphasis on the United States. The purpose of this synthesis is to highlight demographic data, research findings, and case studies that, considered together, may significantly expand the profession’s knowledge about the barriers parenting students face in accessing the library and its services. The first part of the article lays out the …

Wikipedia And Scholarpedia: A Comparative Case Study And Its Implications To Information Literacy, Junli Diao, Stefka Tzanova, Anthony Bishop

Publications and Research

The free online Wikipedia receives increasing attention from academic librarians; however, its counterpart Scholarpedia seems to be neglected. This case study selected two articles bearing the same title Intentionality from Scholarpedia and Wikipedia and brought them under scrutiny of their microstructure and macrostructure. Both microstructure and macrostructure analysis indicated that the addressed readership of the two encyclopedic articles is understandably different in terms of readability and content. The comparative case study concluded with empirical implications that both online, free encyclopedias provide academic librarians with pedagogical instruments to help students engage in authentic knowledge construction.

Professional Ethics And Learning Analytics: A Reflection On A Cross-Departmental Assessment Project, Sarah Cohn

Urban Library Journal

Librarianship as a profession has long been concerned with privacy and user data. As academic libraries move toward embracing learning analytics, questions arise around the ethical use of said data, particularly when it involves students. This paper will explore the role of the library in an institutional learning analytics project. In 2016, the Library at Pace University was approached by the assessment office within the Dyson School of Arts & Sciences and asked to help create a quantitative assessment tool around student learning of information literacy. Using this experience as a starting point, I will explore how librarians can bring …

A Party Platter Of Peer-Reviewed Oer Assignments, Elizabeth Jardine, Ece Aykol, Justin Rogers-Cooper

Publications and Research

Many colleges and universities have adopted core competencies during the last two decades. Their adoption reflects larger national trends in outcomes assessment, teaching and learning, and regional accreditation. Faculty at LaGuardia Community College sought model assignments with reflections on their design that speak to the college’s core competencies— integrative learning, inquiry and problem-solving, and global learning—and the communication abilities that students use to express them—written, oral, and digital communication abilities. In response, the college’s assessment leaders looked to the assignment library created by the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA) for inspiration. They developed the Learning Matters Assignment Library, …