Policy language plays a central role in ensuring that academic libraries are accessible and inclusive to patrons with disabilities. However, relevant accessibility information is often missing from publicly available library policies. This article uses findings from a content analysis of SUNY libraries' public collection development and…

Censorship efforts, especially when geared to fight against censorship of materials for minority sexuality and gender identities, are often hindered by social, cultural, religious, administrative, and political resistance. LGBTQIA+ collections within libraries face resistance, which can come in the form of overt or covert challenges. This study…

Profound changes due to Open-Access (OA) publications lead to organizational changes in universities and libraries. This study examines Israeli librarians' perceptions regarding their role and the academic library's role in promoting OA-publications, including the barriers, challenges, needs, and requirements necessary to promote OA publishing.…

This is the story of six books looted by Nazis from the Jewish Religious Community Library in Prague (JRCLP) that were discovered recently in the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Library. No scholarly literature describing similar experiences of North American academic libraries was found, nor were any professional guidelines for…

This study compares library web usability practices in 2007 and 2020 at academic libraries that are institutional members of the Association of Research Libraries. The authors performed chi-square and t-tests to determine whether there were differences in establishing policies/standards/guidelines (PSGs), conducting usability tests, and providing…

Current literature outlines the importance of--and strategies for--collecting student life material in institutional archives but does not address the inclusion of this material within collecting statements. This study examines publicly available collecting statements from Association of Research Libraries (ARL) institutions' university archives,…

This article summarizes the results of interviews with Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) service hub participants to determine whether and how standardized rights metadata is included in their digital collections. Providing accurate standardized rights metadata is crucial to communicating with patrons regarding how they can use objects in…

Beginning with a discussion of how collections diversity has been conceptualized and assessed within the literature, we then analyze four areas in which professional practices and modes of thinking create barriers to collecting materials from historically marginalized voices. Specifically, we discuss how metadata practices can obscure these…

The purpose of this study is to explore the realization of users' information rights (IRs) in the smart service of university libraries. Based on the LibQUAL model, principal component analysis (PCA) is used to measure the quality of smart services in university libraries. The contribution weight of various services to the realization of IRs is…

In the spring of 2017, digital librarians and digital collection managers at member institutions of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) were surveyed on practices and policies surrounding takedown requests in openly accessible digital collections. The survey collected basic demographic information surrounding the digital repositories…

This paper presents the results of focus groups conducted with student-parents at the University of Memphis. The objective of this study was to explore the research services and library spaces student-parents need to thrive in higher education settings. The results identify several ways in which academic librarians can support student-parents'…

This paper presents the results of a survey of 110 ARL institutions regarding their copyright policies for providing electronic reserves. It compiles descriptive statistics on library practice as well as coding responses to reveal trends and shared practices. Finally, it presents conclusions about policy making, decision making and risk aversion…

In this paper the author compares the use of digital materials that have been deposited in The Ohio State University (OSU) Knowledge Bank (KB). Comparisons are made for content considered in scope of the university archives and those considered out of scope, for materials originating from different campus sources, and for different types of…

Circulation data from the Virginia Tech Libraries were analyzed to determine the extent of continuity or change between the author's study of the use of subject collections in 1982 and the present. Book circulation has declined, largely due to much less use by undergraduates. The overall profile of subject use has changed in ways traceable to…

Argues that unless issues of machine help and human help are given explicit attention by the library profession, the disappearance of human help in patron assistance without input is likely. Discusses convergent commercial- and academic-sector trends, implications for the profession, and three policy alternatives. Presents a patron self-help…