Library and Information Science Commons^™

The Importance Of Graduate-Student-Led Academic Journals Within Library And Information Science, Odin Halvorson

School of Information Student Research Journal

Graduate-student-led academic journals play a crucial role in fostering early career researchers' engagement with scholarly discourse within the field of Library and Information Science (LIS). This paper highlights the significance of these journals by examining their contributions to professional development, peer review practices, and inclusivity. Through a case study of the Student Research Journal (SRJ) at San Jose State University’s iSchool, I demonstrate how student-led journals provide invaluable experiential learning opportunities in leadership, organization, and research skills. The SRJ exemplifies these benefits by achieving international recognition with minimal resources, showcasing its impact-to-cost ratio. This paper also discusses the journal's role …

Ischool Student Research Journal, Vol.14, Iss.2

School of Information Student Research Journal

Article citations within.

Coding With Those Who Show Up: Two Methodologies On Technical Committee Work, Mark E. Eaton

Publications and Research

This paper considers our library’s attempt at applying a “laissez-faire leadership” model to technical committee work. Since its introduction in the 1990s, scholarship on laissez-faire leadership has historically viewed the concept very negatively. However, we argue here that many of these perspectives are straw man arguments that do not adequately consider the possibilities of a laissez-faire model. Following some dissenting voices in the literature, we would like to reclaim the laissez-faire model as a way to facilitate library technical work under certain very specific circumstances. This paper will describe the organizational context where these laissez-faire methods worked for us. Our …

An Examination Of Academic Library Platforms And Systems During Covid-19, Cole Hudson, Paul Gallagher

University Libraries Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper examines the use and subsequent trajectory of academic library technologies due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Taking a broad view of technologies, the systems and services discussed will center around resource use because COVID restrictions shuttered many in-person technologies. The two academic libraries compared in this study show a similar pattern of use and signal growth of certain platforms and technologies for the future.

Engaging Graduate Students In Three Easy Steps: Failures And Successes From Back-To-Back Years, Rhonda Rosen, Raymundo Andrade, Alexander Justice

Journal of Graduate Librarianship

In Fall 2022, three librarians representing the outreach and engagement department and reference and instruction department at Loyola Marymount University’s William H. Hannon Library developed a three-part orientation experience to welcome new theological studies graduate students. The three parts consisted of a 10-minute welcome via Zoom by two outreach librarians; a “meet and greet” library orientation and VIP tour co-presented by an outreach librarian and the librarian for theological studies; and an in-depth instruction session led by the librarian for theological studies. With lessons learned and student feedback collected in Fall 2022, the librarians aimed to improve this three-point plan …

The Living Document, Camilla Lyckblad

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This physical interactive art piece of thesis research in progress aims to deepen comprehension of information behavior in clinical contexts, where the contemporary medical record, with its increasing digital properties such as open record access for patients, can be viewed as an entity that both listens and influences. The art piece sheds light on the complex dynamics of truth within clinical environments, where patients and healthcare professionals might selectively disclose or withhold information, aiming to protect both patient, clinician and the information itself. Set within a small, dimly lit room, the exhibit features eight aged medical records, each inscribed with …

Neo-Documentation’S “Copernican Revolution” Upon Information Science, Ronald E. Day

Proceedings from the Document Academy

The article discusses neo-documentation's "Copernican Revolution" upon information science from the aspect of Heideggerian phenomenology and a documentality of relation and emergence.

Conceptual Curiosity: Sense(Un)Making, Rebekah L. Cowell

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Across disciplines, sensemaking is a theoretical and methodological research program, over forty years in development, that has been treated as a framework for understanding how humans behaviorally respond to external information sources and interpret to construct and actualize actionable outcomes; however, sensemaking is an interlinking process that does not operate in singularity–behaviorally or actionably–it is neurobiological (autonomous drive), cognitive (perceptual and predictive), and psychological (congruency in meaning).

This paper enlarges the conceptual framework for studying sensemaking and redefines it by addressing what sensemaking is, does, and needs. At the core of this conversation is addressing the absence of knowledge and …

Conversations On Cultural Heritage: Confirming The Family Home As An Archive, Vanessa Reyes, Vanessa Irvin

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Family archives, as repositories of cultural heritage, play a crucial role in preserving multi-generational knowledge. The family is the first collaborative unit in which community memory-keeping is operationalized. The family home is an archive or library of data for generations of family members living through historical movements, patterns of migration, and technological advancement. Thus, 'home' is a data-rich repository of local history. Memory-keeping tasks, such as recording events in family Bibles and maintaining photo albums, scrapbooks, and journals, are multi-generational literacy practices. The stories within a family archive endure, but the narrators may change over time. Archiving family cultural heritage …

Space And Context: Exploration Of Information Experience And Document Experience, Carrie A. Boettcher

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper explores documents that are recorded and cataloged, but the original is a one-of-a-kind phenomenon that only exists once. It ponders where information ends, and document begins and the concepts of space and context that contribute to the shape or structure of the document. Specifically, the confidential counseling session, only experienced by the individuals present during the session, repeated but not duplicated, and how information and documents contribute to understanding of the counseling session.

Modeling Context And The Characteristica Universalis, John Kausch

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper proposes prototypes for the exploration of the context of terms in a knowledge organization system by visualizing machine learning produced word embeddings. It puts this work in the context of the search for a universal language, typified by Leibniz’s characteristica universalis. This tradition of the search for universal languages is put in the context of universalizing tendencies in taxonomic classification in library and information science. Following this there is a discussion of the use of machine learning models to represent context. These two concerns inform the construction of prototypes for exploring the contextual spaces produced by word embeddings …

Framing Motions: Thoughts On Proximity & Recorded Motions, With A Demonstration Using Moving Image Choreographic Documents, Jodi Kearns, Brian C. O'Connor

Proceedings from the Document Academy

A demonstration of a multifaceted documentation method for combining captured frames of dance motions, a vetted dance notation language set as closed captions, and guiding choreographer notes into a fixed form sufficiently descriptive, creative, and suitable for representing dance in a form that upgrades how legislators think about choreographic works. This demonstration is informed by historic representations of the proximities of still frames in sequence and seeks conceptual proximity to this frame-work.

Time And The Catalogue, Alec Mullender

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper explores the multiple ways in which concepts of time are incorporated in cataloguing and classification to see how these temporal concepts influence how material is organised in library space. It discusses multiple concepts, including the structural influences of the capitalist ‘exchange-view’ of time in how the discipline is organised and its incorporation into the so-called ‘universal’ cataloguing systems. The continued issues of obsolescence within cataloguing systems as language and concepts constantly evolve, and how these are integrated into the systems themselves. The paper also discusses the semantic difficulties with how time itself is expressed within cataloguing systems, as …

Thinking With Our Grandmothers: Past, Epidata, And Future In Designing A Proximity Affordance, Laurie J. Bonnici, Brian C. O'Connor, Gary Samson

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper examines the limitations of historical documentation, focusing on the lives of mill girls in Manchester, New Hampshire’s textile mills through photographic images and family memories. While photographs, like those by Lewis Hine, provide insight into the physical conditions and harsh realities faced by young workers, they do not capture the inner lives of child laborers or the broader social context shaping their experiences. The authors highlight the shortcomings of traditional archival practices, particularly the subject headings applied to Hine’s photographs, which fail to reflect the complexities of mill girls' lives. Drawing on personal perspectives from the authors—whose grandmothers …

The Norwegian Public Library Of The Future – What Are The Challenges To Meet?, Roswitha Skare

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This article examines the future challenges facing Norwegian public libraries in light of legislative changes and evolving societal needs. Since the Public Library Act of 1986, with updates in 2014, libraries are mandated to be accessible cultural and educational centers. The 2019 national library strategy further emphasizes their role in public enlightenment and community engagement, particularly in the digital age. Despite high usage rates, challenges remain in attracting non-users and enhancing digital services. The article highlights the need for libraries to adapt to an aging population and to expand their role in public health, digital literacy, and community resilience. It …

Imagining The Future Of Records Management: An Analysis Of The Srikandi In Indonesia Through Documentation Studies, Suprayitno Suprayitno, Rahmi Rahmi, Zulfatun Sofiyani

Proceedings from the Document Academy

The SRIKANDI application, a cornerstone of Indonesia's digital records management initiative, embodies the nation's commitment to modernizing governance through electronic systems. This study employs Niels Windfeld Lund’s Complementary Documentation Analysis Model to dissect SRIKANDI'S evolution (diachronic analysis) and its current state (synchronic analysis), offering a comprehensive understanding of its role in Indonesia's e-government landscape. Diachronically, SRIKANDI'S development reflects a strategic shift from fragmented, standalone applications towards a unified, interoperable platform, as mandated by Presidential Regulation No. 95 of 2018. This transition aims to streamline government processes, reduce redundancy, and enhance budget efficiency. Synchronically, SRIKANDI is evaluated as a digital platform …

A Longitudinal Analysis Of Navigating Ethical Reflections Through The Evolution Of Information Profession Dreams, Rahmi Rahmi, Rusdan Kamil

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This study presents a longitudinal analysis of the ethical reflections and evolving professional aspirations of students in the Information Profession course at Universitas Indonesia. Through reflective writing exercises, 192 students explored their future career goals and addressed ethical challenges related to professional documentation, focusing on issues such as privacy, integrity, and responsibility. Using corpus analysis tools like AntConc, the research tracked changes in ethical concerns as students progressed in their studies, revealing an increasing awareness of ethical complexities, particularly in roles like archivist and data analyst. These findings offer valuable insights for developing profession-specific ethical guidelines for information professionals.

Relevance, Works And Context Engineering, Michael K. Buckland, Wayne De Fremery

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Relevance is regarded as centrally important in documentation and information science but has resisted satisfactory definition. The literature presents vague, subjective descriptions and/or operational definitions based on untenable theoretical assumptions. The “work” is a similarly central and poorly defined concept in bibliographic theory and cataloguing. This short essay summarizes previous scholarship that reformulates concepts of relevance in information science as functions of use and works in bibliographic theory as useful sets of objects. Conceptual utility in both cataloging theory and information science is sought by developing descriptive models that attend to the positionality and temporality of “works” and “relevance” as …

The Mutability Of Personal Documents And Mediated Memories As We Age: A Collaborative Reflection, Vanessa Reyes, Bhuva Narayan, Annemarie Zijlema, Mary Anne Kennan

Proceedings from the Document Academy

How do our personal documentation practices change as we age, and how can we create and save personal evidence of ourselves for our family’s future? All of us continually accumulate information about ourselves in our everyday lives, intentionally, incidentally, or otherwise, for self-presentation, self-fulfillment, reminders of our past, reinforcing identity, as a hobby, for personal documentation, or for peace of mind. Increasingly, this evidence is in digital form, and often in the cloud. The authors use a collaborative autoethnography and narrative methodology, as outlined by Ford (2020), to document how aging affects our personal documentation and our memories. In the …

The Meaning Of Collections For The Identity Of University Libraries: The Document Concept As A Tool For Understanding, Hanna Hallnäs

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Historically, university libraries have been defined by the collections they housed and it was the collection that formed the basis of their identity and organization. However, societal developments have shifted this focus, leading to significant changes in both the content and conditions of these collections. What was once predominantly characterized by printed materials has now transitioned to primarily electronic resources. This paper explores how the concept of documents can be utilized to examine the identity of contemporary university libraries. Specifically, it employs David Levy’s notion of documents as ‘talking things,’ examining their relationship to various genres and rhythms. Furthermore, the …

One Object, Fluctuating Trajectories: Harnessing The Document Future Of Premodern Manuscripts, L.P. Coladangelo, Rose A. Mccandless

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Using copy theory as a framework to explore document surrogacy and simulation, this paper discusses premodern manuscripts as a case study for understanding relevant aspects of temporality and materiality in the experience of documents to speculate on the nature of immersive documents of the future. This speculation is powered on mapping and synthesizing the paths of interconnected temporal and material change manuscripts have followed by examining multiple “versions” of these documents based on various contexts of use and access and technological innovations. As hand copied documents of similar texts, premodern manuscripts are posited as both copies and originals depending on …

Review Of Decolonial Archival Futures, Taylor F. Henning

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

This review of Decolonial Archival Futures asserts that the book is about colonial roots of Western archival practice, challenging traditional archival standards, and archival power. The book provides case studies from the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to demonstrate examples of recentering archival recordkeeping practices on Indigenous communities and post-custodial models of recordkeeping. Decolonial Archival Futures is highly recommended for any archivists working with records by our about Indigenous communities, as well as any information professionals interested in learning about challenging traditional archival paradigms.

Concierge: How The Pandemic Lockdown Changed The Face Of Access Services, Stephen J. Walker

Urban Library Journal

This article addresses the changes made in Access Services in an urban college library after reopening during the Covid-19 pandemic. During the pandemic the library witnessed a downturn in patron visits and physical textbook usage as classes remained mostly online. Access Services moved from being a fast-paced, high demand service desk of print textbooks and laptops to a slower user assistance library services unit. Reopening the library to the college community and creating a safe study space for students required preparation. Various key resources such as study rooms, calculators, phone chargers, and headsets became a higher priority for students post-lockdown. …

Notes From The Editor, Derek Stadler

Urban Library Journal

I am very pleased to welcome you to the first issue of the 30th volume of Urban Library Journal.

Libraries On The Front Lines: The Imperative For Disaster-Ready Information Professionals, Feili Tu-Keefner Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

Libraries, particularly local public libraries, have evolved into hubs for community-first services, extending beyond traditional roles. Library personnel are now expected to act as first responders and crisis leaders during times such as natural disasters. This report documents the critical crisis leadership qualifications required for library personnel, identified through comprehensive research from 2015 to 2023. Findings from these situation-specific case studies call attention to the community’s needs for library services during emergencies, underscoring the requirement for LIS education to include disaster management. Continuing education (CE) is also critical in preparing information professionals for these essential roles.

Integrating Diverse Perspectives In Graduate Statistics Education Through Academic And Library Faculty Collaboration, Christina Jones, Ethan Fridmanski, Julie A. Lorah

Journal of Graduate Librarianship

Graduate-level statistics education is often narrowly focused on the mathematical aspect of modeling. While this aspect is important, this focus results in a gap in the student’s understanding regarding the context of the development and use of statistical models. This article provides a description and initial evaluation of a program designed to address this gap. Specifically, the authors collaborated to create a reading list related to the topic of social justice in statistics and integrated the resources on this list into a graduate-level statistics class on the topic of multilevel modeling. The article describes this integration, preliminary evaluation, and future …

Creating A Road Map For Librarians To Teach Statistical Literacy, Giovanna Badia

Journal of Graduate Librarianship

This article offers a case study of the development of a workshop on reading regression results. It also provides a practical overview of how librarians, guided by their own experiences working with data, can teach others how to read descriptive statistics and regression results. The broader aim of the article is to help librarians move toward teaching a workshop on any statistical literacy topic or expand their teaching activities in this area. It includes tips for preparing to develop a statistical literacy workshop, as well as a bibliography of learning and teaching resources on statistical analysis.

Bringing The Library Into Brightspace, Stephen Francoeur, Rebecca Hyams, John Delooper, Robin Naughton, Eric Silberberg

Publications and Research

This panel presentation highlights collaboration among CUNY libraries and LMS administrators to automate integration of library course reserves, research guides and other web-based services into Brightspace. The presentation begins discussing how learning tools interoperability (LTI) integration provides library resources to students at their point of need. It then describes the technical requirements to automate and customize the Springshare LTI library platform within Brightspace. The panel concludes with examples from several campuses demonstrating what this integration looks like.

The Library Leads The Way: A Cross-Campus Effort To Curate And Celebrate Intellectual Output At The University Of San Diego, Amanda Makula

Copley Library: Faculty Scholarship

The University of San Diego (USD) holds an annual event, coordinated by the Office of the Provost in conjunction with the Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP), designed to recognize faculty scholarly output and grant recipients. In 2023, the University Library saw an opportunity to get involved by hosting the event and curating a comprehensive bibliography of all faculty and staff scholarly production for presentation at the event.

This new endeavor required close collaboration not only between the Library, Provost, and OSP, but also the Library’s Digital Initiatives unit, who laid the foundation for the bibliography by culling citation databases such …

Harnessing Synergy: Galloping Together To Achieve Common Goals, Katie Richardson Mlis, Kathryn Renton Phd, Janice Gunther Martin Phd, Katrin Boniface Abd

Journal of Western Archives

“Harnessing Synergy: Galloping Together to Achieve Common Goals'' is a case study focusing on how the Head of Cal Poly Pomona University Library Special Collections and Archives joined forces with the founding board members of the Equine History Collective to drive research and advancement in the study of equine history–a key collecting area of the University Library Special Collections and Archives unit. Through sharing expertise, jointly producing events, and developing longer-term strategies together, these collaborative efforts have enhanced outreach of Cal Poly Pomona Special Collections and Archives and associated scholarly activities, enriched perspectives on equine cultural heritage, and facilitated innovative …