The Main Library Service Desk is a one-stop academic help center located between a newly renovated student-focused space called the Learning Commons and the library collections. Services began with the first day of classes, August 26, 2013, and assessment has been ongoing, in part due to the availability of data. Staffing levels, staffing hours,…

The IFLA Trend Report identified five trends that will impact the information environment (IFLA, 2015), such as access to information with new technologies, online education for global learning, hyper-connected communities, and the global information environment. The faculty at San José State University (SJSU) School of Information (iSchool) is…

Reference transactions in academic libraries have been on the decline since mid-1990. The Academic Library Survey from the National Center for Education Statistics shows an average drop of 25% in reference use from 1996-2004 with higher numbers at some institutions such as the University of Maryland which plummeted 47% (Martell, 2008). The…

Student employees are essential to academic libraries on college and university campuses. The employment programme at this mid-sized university library intentionally seeks to engage students in work that not only benefits the library, but also provides students the opportunity to learn and hone skills that can contribute to academic and…

Research consultations are a standard service in academic libraries and consume significant library resources. There is a lack of scholarship evaluating the impact of this service on faculty. This paper describes the impact of librarian consultations on faculty and their role in the research process. Data was collected from a survey of sixty-seven…

Association of College and Research Libraries' (ACRL's) "2016 Top Trends in Academic Libraries" noted a "shift to the incorporation and integration of more continuous, ongoing, flexible, and sustainable review of collections," and "an increasing need" to align collection development with "institutional research…

While the mission of research libraries remains constant, the nature of research libraries and what they do is changing. Research libraries are taking on new roles in digital scholarship, data management, and scholarly communications. More than ever, libraries know they must align their mission with the objectives of key stakeholders. This article…

With this issue of "Research Library Issues" ("RLI"), the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) (re)turns its collective attention to research data management (RDM), a topic consistently identified as a top priority by ARL library directors, and a topic of several recent ARL publications. This is a pivotal moment for the…

Demonstrating the value of library and information services has been a theme in library discussions in recent years. The application of many different approaches to evaluation has waxed and waned together with the development of theories of evaluation across the humanities and social sciences. Over the past two decades research and activity on…

The Mississippi State University Libraries' Virtual Reference Service collected statistics about virtual reference usage. Analysis of the data collected by an entry survey from chat and e-mail transactions provided librarians with concrete information about what patron groups were the highest and lowest users of virtual reference services. These…

To understand and share the feelings of students one must see the world through their lens. Empathic design includes aspects of empathy and offers a means for a practical application of the concept by encouraging organizations to put themselves into the shoes or situation of their users so as to better understand users' needs. Program evaluation…

This article reports the findings of a study exploring the nature and extent of research on diversity in library and information science (LIS) doctoral dissertations from 2000 to 2009. By systematically examining the last decade of dissertations in the field, this study is meant to reveal the levels of interest in diversity research among doctoral…

Few librarians have examined the implications of Rolf Norgaard's theory of "writing information literacy," a rhetoric-based concept that situates research practices in context. Because the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education emphasizes research as a social practice,…

While many LIS publications have focused on Wikipedia, no LIS study has used intersectional class analysis to consider the site as a transmitter and reproducer of hegemonic ideology. Using both Antonio Gramsci and LIS theorist Michael Harris as starting points, this paper argues that Wikipedia is predicated on a philosophy of pluralism that serves…

This paper explores how internationalization is understood and experienced in German academic libraries. Its main purpose is to move the discussion of internationalization in academic libraries beyond the boundaries of English-speaking North America by investigating a European perspective. Its secondary purpose is to investigate the role of…