The role of the student worker is expanding in academic libraries. Their unique perspectives add valuable insights to the design and delivery of library services, project development, outreach activities, and operational planning. Student-workers gain internal and external benefits from working in peer-to-peer learning environments which also…

Engineering librarians at Texas A&M University in College Station partnered with the university's College of Engineering to provide information assistance to students participating in Aggies Invent, a series of 48-hour design competitions conducted in the college's makerspace. To assess the impact of librarian-student consultations, the…

As an alternative to large-scale outreach events, three public services librarians created a series of small-scale outreach events aimed at educating graduate students about library services and increasing positive perceptions of the library. The librarians ran five events with a 2:1 student-to-librarian ratio, and one event with a 13:1…

The purpose of this study was to plan for, design, and launch the initial development phase of an affordable course materials initiative within the library at one Texas private four-year university. More specifically, the focus of the study centered on providing interested, volunteering academic faculty with the tools, resources, and expertise…

The purpose of this qualitative research study was to illustrate the experiences of transfer students interacting with community college librarians for instruction and research assistance. This research study was guided by one research question: (RQ1) How do transfer students at community colleges who frequently meet with their community college…

Following two previous studies in 2010 and 2013, this study intends to identify current trends of Sam Houston State University students' technology and communication needs and preferences regarding library services and resources. Drawing comparisons to two previous local studies and national data sets, such as those from Pew Internet Research and…

This article will describe how merging service points in an academic library is an opportunity to improve customer service and utilize staffing resources more efficiently. Combining service points provides libraries with the ability to create a more positive library experience for patrons by minimizing the ping-pong effect for assistance. The…

Academic libraries are continually being asked to demonstrate their value. Showing benefits that provide financial value to the user community is one approach to meeting this challenge. With a focus on journal articles and monographs, the authors have analyzed course syllabi to determine the cost savings graduate students in psychology receive…

The academic library, given its often privileged position on campus, is the information source that can include directional as well as general campus facts among the myriad of print and e-resources for reference. Also, an academic library's audiences can be quite varied and include prospective students or parents seeking more general knowledge of…

The purpose of this study is to gain an understanding of current academic medical library circulation polices and examine methods libraries utilize to meet patron needs. Key informants were selected from five states. Statistics regarding financial practices, users, services, space access, and circulation practices were collected via survey…

Academic librarians have been engaged in embedded librarianship for nearly 15 years, yet there are few published research studies on the impact of physically embedded librarians, who work alongside departmental faculty. This study leveraged a change in reference service to analyze what happened when subject librarians moved from the library…

As more students, faculty, and staff from traditionally underrepresented groups enter universities and colleges, academic libraries must find ways to reach out to these groups in order to better meet their unique educational needs. In this article, librarians from two large public universities describe how they used data about their communities to…

Smartphone users expect the presentation of Web sites on their mobile browsers to look and feel like native applications. With the pressure on library Web developers to produce app-like mobile sites, there is often a rush to get a site up without considering the importance of reusing or even restructuring the data driving the Web sites. An…

This study identifies developments relevant to new academic librarians' perceptions of librarianship. Through use of the long interview and document analysis, the researchers developed a grounded theory consisting of six categories that weigh upon novice librarians' perceptions of the profession: (1) deciding upon a career, (2) experiencing…

The work of collection development in academic video game collections is at a crucial point of transformation--gaming librarians are ready to expand beyond console games collected in disc and cartridge format to the world of Internet games. At the same time, forms and genres of video games such as serious and independent games are increasingly…