Library and Information Science Commons^™

Citation Analysis Of Undergraduate Honors Theses, Ellen K. Wilson

The Southeastern Librarian

Librarians often wonder what resources students use for research and whether the library provides access to these resources. At the University of South Alabama (USA), students in the honors program must complete a senior thesis in order to graduate with honors. The library holds these theses, providing a convenient source of bibliographies for examination. Studying these theses provided an unobtrusive manner of investigation. While such theses do not represent the entire undergraduate population’s research and writing behavior, they provide a starting point for addressing the above question. Non-honors program students likely encounter the same difficulties in locating and using resources …

The Southeastern Librarian V. 59, No. 4 (Winter 2012) Complete Issue

The Southeastern Librarian

Complete issue of The Southeastern Librarian, volume 59, No. 4 (Winter 2012).

Sela News

The Southeastern Librarian

Recent activities from the Southeastern Library Association. Highlights include: SELA board members visiting West Virginia Library Association conference; proposed SELA constitutional amendment; call for papers for SELA UCLS New Voices Program.

State News

The Southeastern Librarian

Recent developments from SELA member institutions.

People News

The Southeastern Librarian

Recent professional developments from SELA members.

Proposed Changes To Southeastern Library Association Constitution

The Southeastern Librarian

Proposed changes to the Southeastern Library Association (SELA) Constitution.

From The Editor, Perry Bratcher

The Southeastern Librarian

Column from Perry Bratcher, editor of The Southeastern Librarian.

The Southeastern Librarian V. 59, No. 3 (Fall 2011) Complete Issue

The Southeastern Librarian

Complete issue of The Southeastern Librarian, volume 59, No. 3 (Fall 2011).

Best Practices For Hiring Academic Librarians With Faculty Status And Rank, Christopher Shaffer

The Southeastern Librarian

When library school students graduate, their primary goal frequently is to find a job; they may have a preference for a position as a public librarian, academic librarian, or school media specialist, but most important is finding gainful employment in order to put food on the table. The person responsible for hiring academic librarians must attempt to discern, based on a résumé and a relatively brief personal interview whether a candidate is capable of performing the basic tasks of being a librarian, interacting with faculty, guiding students, and performing their duties as a member of the academy. To make the …

One Mississippi Library’S Experience In Opening Up The State Judiciary To Greater Access By The Library Patron, Stephen Parks

The Southeastern Librarian

Legal materials such as case reporters and case digests can be quite expensive and burdensome for libraries to acquire, due to little use for such materials. Online legal sources such as Westlaw and LexisNexis are rarely an option for these libraries because of their tremendous costs. However, most libraries face legal-related questions from patrons, and librarians lack easily accessible materials to provide the patron an answer.

The staff at Mississippi College School of Law Library decided to do something about this problem by creating a program to provide complete access to the appellate courts of the state of Mississippi freely …

The Southeastern Librarian V. 59, No. 2 (Summer 2011) Complete Issue

The Southeastern Librarian

Complete issue of The Southeastern Librarian, volume 59, No. 2 (Summer 2011).

Sela News

The Southeastern Librarian

Recent activities from the Southeastern Library Association. Highlights include: the SELA Summer Conference will be held August 12-13 at the University of Alabama Birmingham; the SELA President asks SELA to provide more help to librarians; the SELA Mentoring Program is looking for participants.

State News

The Southeastern Librarian

Recent developments from SELA member institutions.

People News

The Southeastern Librarian

Recent professional developments from SELA members.

Stress And Cataloging Paraprofessionals In Academic And Public Libraries In Florida, Edna Mcclellan

The Southeastern Librarian

Over the years and particularly with the advent of OCLC, more and more tasks once considered the realm of the professional cataloger area being completed by paraprofessionals. This article confines itself to the cataloging paraprofessional, the cataloging record, workload, and training. Who is creating the cataloging record, or, if not responsible for the record in its entirety, who is responsible for parts of it? Does the assuming these higher level tasks, such as creating the call number and subject headings, cause any undue stress for the paraprofessional? What is the stress from workload and pace?

From The Editor, Perry Bratcher

The Southeastern Librarian

Column from Perry Bratcher, editor of The Southeastern Librarian.

The Southeastern Librarian V. 59, No. 1 (Spring 2011) Complete Issue

The Southeastern Librarian

Complete issue of The Southeastern Librarian, volume 59, No. 1 (Spring 2011).

From Both Sides Now: A Recently-Hired Librarian And A Library Veteran Respond To The Loss Of A Favorite Database, Harry D. Nuttall, Carley Knight

The Southeastern Librarian

The last three decades, and especially the last fifteen years, have seen an expansion in the formats in which library materials are available, as electronic resources have joined the traditional print offerings produced by library suppliers. More and more, the electronic resource is becoming the first stop “go-to” information source, a predominance which can be confirmed by the number of reference and other sources which have shifted from print to electronic format or, not making the change, have simply ceased to exist.

This paradigm shift has affected acquisitions departments and collection development librarians, particularly in academic libraries, as they now …

Of Fairs And Festivals: Librarians Teach Thematic First-Year Seminars, Donna Braquet, Micheline Westfall

The Southeastern Librarian

For almost a century, library skills instruction by academic librarians has been a vital component of university programs created to help first-year students adapt to the social and academic environment of college life (Walter, 2004). Asretention of first-year students has become a strategic goal for universities, a variety of firstyear experience (FYE) programs have been developed over the last decade to address this goal. For many academic librarians, the FYE programs have resulted in an increased collaboration with faculty (Walter, 2004). This collaboration ranges from assisting faculty with incorporating information literacy skills within classroom instruction to embedding librarians within classes …

Attitudes Towards Library Patrons With Physical Challenges: A Survey Of Members Of The Public Library Division Of The Alabama Library Association, Jackie Brodsky, Muriel K. Wells

The Southeastern Librarian

By surveying members of the Public Library Division of the Alabama Library Association, this study sought to determine attitudes toward patrons with physical challenges. The continued growth in the population of persons over age 65, coupled with the fact that nearly one in five Americans report some level of physical challenge, suggests the need for libraries to provide resources and services to this growing constituency. The advent of new technologies and resources for libraries to provide access to information by persons with physical challenges, allows more users to fulfill a more participatory role within their information-seeking activities. The application of …

The Southeastern Librarian V. 58, No. 4 (Winter 2011) Complete Issue

The Southeastern Librarian

Complete issue of The Southeastern Librarian, volume 58, No. 4 (Winter 2011).

Sela News

The Southeastern Librarian

Recent activities from the Southeastern Library Association. Highlights include: SELA names the 2010 Outstanding Southeastern Authors for Fiction and Non-fiction; SELA Mentoring program is looking for participants.

Non-Sela News

The Southeastern Librarian

Recent news of interest to libraries and librarians. Includes: HBCU Library Alliance awards $70,000 Mellon Foundation Grant; The Informed Librarian Online website now offers premium content from all major library journal publishers; The Academic and Cultural Enrichment (ACE) Scholars at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) will be holding the unconference Un-hushed: Speaking out About the Library and Information Science Profession (or the Really Fun Super Cool Library Conference) March 26, 2011; 20th North Carolina Serial Conference will be held March 10, 2011, in Chapel Hill, NC.

State News

The Southeastern Librarian

Recent developments from SELA member institutions.

People News

The Southeastern Librarian

Recent professional developments from SELA members.

From The Editor, Perry Bratcher

The Southeastern Librarian

Column from Perry Bratcher, editor of The Southeastern Librarian.

The Southeastern Librarian V. 58, No. 3 (Fall 2010) Complete Issue

The Southeastern Librarian

Complete issue of The Southeastern Librarian, volume 58, No. 3 (Fall 2010).

Making Research Make Sense: Guiding College Students Into Information Literacy Through The Information Search Process, Jeffrey M. Mortimore

The Southeastern Librarian

Bennett College for Women is a private, four year college serving approximately 725 African-American women in Greensboro, North Carolina. Because of its unique demographic as one of only two all-female, historically black colleges in the United States, Bennett College attracts women from across the country and the world with a profound diversity of talents and preparation for undergraduate study. The Thomas F. Holgate Library supports the research needs of the college through an active instructional services program at the undergraduate level. While the library has provided library orientation and traditional bibliographic instruction for decades, during the 2007/8 academic year, and …

Integrating Information Literacy Instruction In An Upper-Division Writing-Intensive Class, Ellen K. Wilson, Jeffrey M. Blankenship

The Southeastern Librarian

Writing-intensive courses are a required component of undergraduate education at the University of South Alabama, but often the courses are designed to test students’ writing skills, rather than to teach the research and writing process. In the fall of 2008, an instruction librarian and an assistant professor in political science collaborated to redesign one writing intensive course, Public Administration (PSC 401), in an attempt to address this dilemma. This project was born out of frustration – frustration on the part of the professor about the generally poor quality of writing and research skills by students in the course the previous …

The Mississippi Digital Library’S Civil Rights Thesaurus: An Evolving Authority Control Tool For Civil Rights-Related Headings In Metadata Records, Kathleen L. Wells

The Southeastern Librarian

The online Civil Rights Thesaurus (CRT) at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM) had its beginnings in the digitization of civil rights materials in the university’s McCain Library and Archives in the early 2000s. The materials included oral history interviews, letters, newspaper clippings, photographs, and other items from the rich history of the civil rights movement in Mississippi, including materials from the Freedom Summer of 1964. In addition to the creation of digitized images, making these materials available online as the Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive included the formulation of descriptive records using Dublin Core metadata and the development …