The culture of assessment in higher education requires academic librarians to demonstrate the impact of information literacy instruction on student learning. As a result, many librarians seek to gain knowledge about the information literacy assessment approaches available to them. This article identifies three major assessment approaches: (1)…

Effective leadership and increasing diversity are central concerns in the library profession. Using qualitative interviewing and research methods, this study identifies the attributes, knowledge, and skills that African American women need in order to be successful leaders in today's Association of Research Libraries (ARL). These findings indicate…

After seeing growing frustration among inexperienced undergraduate researchers searching a popular aggregated interdisciplinary database, the authors questioned whether the leading interdisciplinary databases are serving undergraduates' needs. As a preliminary exploration of this question, the authors queried vendors, analyzed their marketing…

Teams play an important role in the University of Maryland (UM) Libraries. Since 1998, teams and collaborative teamwork have become the way librarians address the myriad of issues affecting the needs of UM's faculty, students, and staff. There has been much change in the UM Libraries over the past nine years, and the development is ongoing.…

To explore how effective CPS (Classroom Performance Systems) are in the classroom, specifically for library instruction, this pilot study considered the question: "Does the use of CPS improve student retention of information presented in class as measured by pre-and posttest scores?" The use of pretest and posttest measurements for the retention…

This article presents a case study of an urban academic library's attempt to identify factors that influence the perceptions of students of color concerning the library as a welcoming space. The goal of this study is to determine if there are qualitative divergent factors along racial lines concerning how students use this library. The research is…

This paper identifies key methodological issues affecting quality of data in the evaluation of remote reference services. Despite a growing number of studies in this area, no comprehensive effort has been made to identify potential problems and suggest solutions. The strategies proposed in this paper offer practical ways in which libraries can…

The topic of academic/research librarians with subject doctorates is largely unexplored in the literature, despite recent efforts to recruit them. Based on survey data gathered from non-LIS doctorate holders currently working in U.S. and Canadian academic/research libraries, this article highlights data and trends relating to these librarians,…

Knowing how to select, organize, and use information in order to solve problems, handle new situations, and continue learning are key issues in the teaching and learning scenario in contemporary society. Teaching these skills is particularly critical for European universities and is currently recognized as vital in the context of the European…

Librarians at Washington State University Vancouver helped the campus develop a method of assessing its General Education Program, a program based on university learning goals, one of which is information literacy. The assessment method, which relies on an electronic portfolio (ePortfolio) along with rubrics to evaluate work in the ePortfolio,…

This article discusses the electronic thesis and dissertation project at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be'er Sheva, Israel. It describes the status of the ETD movement in Israel as part of the worldwide spread of ETDs as reported in the literature. It also examines openness to ETDs by faculty and by publisher discipline. (Contains 6…

Among librarians, government information has a reputation for being a valuable but underused resource. A literature review of undergraduate citation studies, however, reveals that the use of government information has apparently increased so much for some subject areas that, after books and journals, it has become one of the most frequently used…

This article addresses workplace culture in academic libraries as an aspect of organizational success in achieving on-the-job diversity. It introduces a conceptual framework in the form of selected indicators as measurements of cultural integration in the workplace. Characteristics of organizational cultural health are also identified in order to…

In 2006, MIRACLE Project investigators censused library directors at all U.S. academic institutions about their activities planning, pilot testing, and implementing the institutional repositories on their campuses. Out of 446 respondents, 289 (64.8 percent) were from master's and baccalaureate institutions (M&BIs) where few operational…

Although online information literacy tutorials have proven to be a popular method of delivering instruction to undergraduates, there seem to be relatively few that are targeted toward junior faculty or graduate students. Librarians at the University of Colorado have created an online tutorial for junior faculty and graduate students. "Publish Not…