The data landscape study at Virginia Tech addresses the changing modes of faculty scholarship and supports the development of a user-centric data infrastructure, management, and curation system. The study investigates faculty researchers' current practices in organizing, describing, and preserving data and the emerging needs for services and…

This introductory essay to this special issue demonstrates that action research has a vital role in evidence-informed practice in academic libraries. This special issue of "College and Research Libraries" ("C&RL") proudly features a selection of action research studies by participants of the Association of College and…

The purpose of this study was to assess the convenience and accessibility of library services to users with disabilities at Aligarh Muslim University in India. The study utilized both quantitative and qualitative methods through questionnaires, interview and remarks applying the IFLA checklist to investigate the scenario. The study established…

This article reports on findings of an online survey of teacher librarians about their instructional work, approaches, and roles and how these aspects of their teaching have changed over time. Academic librarians who had at least one year of library teaching experience and who had been actively involved in library instruction within the past two…

This study focuses on the roles of organizational stories among librarians who work at the reference desk. Twenty librarians employed in four academic institutions were interviewed. Most of the organizational stories shared among the participants and their colleagues were rich in tacit knowledge and can be classified according to four main roles:…

This paper provides a historical account of Ralph Halsted Parker and his work to automate libraries in the early to middle parts of the twentieth century. One of Parker's motivations to automate stemmed from a desire to professionalize academic librarianship, and this is evident in his administration as library director at the University of…

While instruction from the communication center and library has supported students and teaching for many years, we seek a more intentional collaboration between these support services and the basic communication course. This article follows a pilot case study performed to explore student perceptions of an in-class collaborative session designed to…

This issue's column focuses on online tools and resources available for leadership development of academic, public services staff. The resources are not targeted solely to professional librarians, but rather to all levels of library staff engaged with the public. In addition to inspirational and coaching videos, reviewers recommend resource guides…

Many universities and colleges focus on student retention and completion as a measure of their success. Publications such as the "Chronicle of Higher Education" carry an increasing number of articles dealing with student retention, success, and completion. Academic libraries support this goal through a wide variety of services, teaching,…

We report findings from an assessment of e-book user experience (search and information seeking) from usage data and user tests. The usage data showed that most reading sessions were brief and focused on certain pages, suggesting that users mainly use e-books to find specific information. The user tests found that participants tended to use…

Usage statistics are a regular part of assessment but the lack of context leaves librarians pondering the reasons for fluctuations in use. Through development of an online survey, we examined faculty perceptions, knowledge, and use of distance library services to support online courses. Responses provided much needed context and helped to…

This article describes for the first time the composition and structure of the personal networks of novice librarian researchers. We used social network analysis to observe if participating in the Institute for Research Design in Librarianship (IRDL) affected the development of the librarians' personal networks and how the networks changed over…

Journal clubs are meetings where participants engage in discussion or appraisal of professional literature and research. This study investigates the perceived value of librarians' participation in journal clubs. Using a hermeneutic dialectic process, we built a construction of the value of journal club participation based on interviews with…

The aim of this article is to present a comparison between two academic libraries: Indiana University Libraries in the United States and the Library of Pope John Paul II State School of Higher Education in Biala Podlaska, Poland. This comparison is based on data that each of these libraries published in statistical reports. Much of the information…

In an effort to bridge the gap between the one-on-one attention that students receive when they come into the library and the attention given to online learners, the University of West Florida Libraries added an online learner component to its Personal Librarian Program. Personal librarian programs provide an opportunity for individualized…