This article presents the results of a Web-based survey regarding the circulation of tablets in academic libraries. The survey, which was completed by 61 respondents, identifies the most common circulation policies and procedures used. These results will help other academic institutions develop their own policy or update existing ones. Areas of…

In his article "The McDonaldization of Academic Libraries?" Brian Quinn explores to what extent and to what effect academic libraries have become "McDonaldized," according to the concept developed by sociologist George Ritzer. Quinn identifies a number of ways in which the four dimensions of…

Academic librarianship has had a traditional role encompassing various specialisms: subject support, training, journal subscription management, collection development and user engagement front of house. While many of these roles remain, they should be re-evaluated. New competencies and skillsets in teaching, publishing, bibliometrics, impact, data…

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…

This article uses the case study of developing a collaborative "out-of-hours" virtual enquiry service by members of the Northern Collaboration Group of academic libraries in the north of England to explore the importance of communication and collaboration between academic library services in enhancing student learning. Set within the…

With the growing number of online courses and programs across the higher education spectrum, the need to train faculty to effectively design and deliver online courses has become essential to many institutions. However, many professional development options do not include information or support in order to transition the same library services and…

Although cited reference studies are common in the library and information science literature, they are rarely performed in nonacademic institutions or in the atmospheric and oceanic sciences. In this paper, we analyze more than 400,000 cited references made by authors affiliated with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration between…

When asked to print the full text of an article, many undergraduate college students print the abstract instead of the full text. This study seeks to determine the underlying cause(s) of this confusion. In this quantitative study, participants (n = 40) performed five usability tasks to assess ease of use and usefulness of five commercial library…

Evidence-based practice (EBP), like information literacy, is concerned with an individual's knowledge, skills, and attitudes relating to using information. EBP is now a professional competency in fields as diverse as social work, nursing and allied health fields, and public policy. A comparison of the Association of College and Research Libraries'…

This study examines job announcements for social science data librarians and professionals to identify trends in the profession. A collection of 167 job postings in 2005-2012 from the International Association for Social Science Information Services & Technology website was analyzed on the frequencies of term occurrence and co-occurrence in…

As long as empirical research has existed, researchers have been doing "data management" in one form or another. However, funding agency mandates for doing formal data management are relatively recent, and academic libraries' involvement has been concentrated mainly in the last few years. The National Science Foundation implemented a new…

The Oregon State University Valley Library has been open 24 hours per day, five days per week, during regular academic terms since 2010. The authors collected survey data during 2012 to explore how students used the hours and whether they perceived that the provision of 24/5 hours contributes to their academic success. Nearly 90% of the…

In the future, what role will the academic research library play in achieving the mission of higher education? This essay describes seven strategies that academic research libraries can adopt to become future-present libraries--libraries that foster what Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown have called "a new culture of learning." Written…

Rubrics are a rapidly growing subfield of information literacy assessment, providing a powerful tool for understanding student learning. This paper explores the role that the creation and application of an information literacy rubric can play in program development. Because of the Information Literacy in Student Writing assessment project at…

As e-resources become more ubiquitous, and the technologies available to access them more sophisticated, libraries have greater opportunities to reach out to global users. However, this same distance means that some users never even set foot in a physical library. This case study will describe how one large academic library started a business,…