This article presents an interview with SirsiDynix CEO Gary M. Rautenstrauch and newly appointed VP of library relations Berit Nelson about some of the issues that have been roiling the ILS world and the company itself, among them the recent consolidation of SirsiDynix's offices, customer service, the state of library budgets, the rise of ebooks…

There's a lot of focus on the "Next Gen" librarians out there bringing a youth perspective that's supposed to shake things up and introducing new ideas and practices into a profession that sometimes moves forward at a glacial pace. But the ideas of the new generation do not invalidate the work done by those who came before. In fact, change in…

Each new school year, academic librarians are given a fresh crop of students and faculty to entice through the doors, both physical and virtual. Librarians create clever marketing that appeals to their students' intelligence. They devise games to highlight services. They foster a sense of ownership, offer exemplary service that makes their users'…

How does one learn a second language? By drilling on conjugations? By practicing dialog? For decades, though the recommended method kept changing, linguists tended to argue that there was only one best way to learn French or Spanish or Hindi. But no more. Now, linguists agree that there's more than one way to learn a new language effectively and…

Ecology is the study of interactions between organisms and their environment, and the academic library could be considered to be an ecosystem, i.e., a "biological organization" in which multiple species must interact, both with one another and with their environment. The metaphor of the library as ecosystem is flexible enough to be applied not…

This article talks about Mormonism, which has been sensationalized more often than most other religions. Since before the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and through Mitt Romney's run for the U.S. Presidency, an unprecedented number of news stories have been published about the Mormon faith. Historian Richard Bushman has termed the last…

How librarians came to their careers is as varied as the people themselves, but despite some often highly publicized challenges for college and university librarians in the digital age, academic librarianship is good work, according to the "Library Journal's" Job Satisfaction Survey. This article presents the results of this survey. The…

Discusses the position of the academic librarian in academic collective bargaining units. Recently there has been an increase in exceptions to the general pattern of librarian-faculty units. Librarians at the universities with the 50 largest libraries are now directed towards broad multicampus multivocational bargaining units. (RAA)

This article details the work of Jennifer Hain-Teper, from the University of Illinois Library. For Jennifer Hain Teper, it all began with a simple question: "If you could do anything at all, regardless of pay, what would it be?" This was posed by a friend when Hain Teper was a volunteer at the wildflower research center in Austin, TX.…

In this article, the authors discuss how the University of Rochester's two-year ethnographic study reveals what students do on campus and how the library fits in. Under Nancy Fried Foster's guidance, teams of librarians and staff conducted a two-year investigation. The goal: to improve the libraries' reference services, facilities, and web pages…

Annette Haines, one of three field librarians at the University of Michigan (UM), traveled to Angouleme, France, with a faculty member to attend an international comic book festival. As the field librarian in the School of Art and Design, Haines was able to learn firsthand what materials professor Phoebe Gloeckner, a well-known graphic novelist,…

Despite a difficult economy and tightening budgets, both jobs and salaries rose for 2007 graduates. Echoing the previous year's growth, reported annual salaries increased approximately 3.1%, from $41,014 in 2006 to $42,361. The picture was most positive for graduates in the Southeast, whose average annual starting salary surged past the $40,000…

After entering as a "bit player" among feudal lords, she became an honored, celebrated campus leader. Building and repositioning the library, Susan Nutter brought it from what one senior professor called "an embarrassment" to its current role and site, a central force and place in the academic enterprise at North Carolina State…

In this article, the author discusses his immediate concerns about working at Butler Library at Columbia University. He discusses the structure of the library system and voices his concerns about the structure. The structure is best described as a stratified pyramid. The librarians hired into the "upper base" are either specialists without an MLS…

Tom Peters packs 36 hours of work into the confines of a 24-hour day. Without breaking a sweat, he juggles multiple collaborative projects, which currently include an Illinois academic library shared storage facility; a multistate virtual reference and instruction service for blind and visually impaired individuals (InfoEyes); a virtual meeting…