In schools where student learning is a top priority, librarians' roles include teacher, instructional partner, reading motivator, staff developer, information specialist, curator, and program administrator. They are steered by national standards akin to those guiding core subjects, and it is the librarians' job to embed these standards…

The New Media Consortium's "Horizon Report" for higher education cites games and gamification with a time-to-adoption of two to three years. The use of digital games is almost ubiquitous in social media and is swiftly gaining popularity in other industries as well. Many in higher education have embraced gamification due to its…

Where do school librarians go to find out the latest on how the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system is being used (and will be used) in the 21st-century virtual-knowledge world? The answer is two great websites containing: (1) the most current information on both Dewey and linked data at <http://dewey.info>; (2) Dewey here-and-now…

There has been a noticeable divide the past few years within the library world regarding electronic books. Many academic libraries have been purchasing or leasing web-based academic ebooks for years. Most public libraries on the other hand (thanks in large part to services such as OverDrive) have directed their attention toward downloadable…

Over the past ten years, various organizations, both public and private, have expressed interest in implementing the Faceted Application of Subject Terminology (FAST) in their cataloging workflows. As interest in FAST has grown, so too has interest in knowing how FAST is being used and by whom. Since 2002 eighteen institutions in six countries…

Public libraries play an important part in the development of a community. Today, they are seen as more than store houses of books; they are also responsible for the dissemination of online, and offline information. Public access computers are becoming increasingly popular as more and more people understand the need for internet access. Using a…

A study to compare the effectiveness of an in-person library orientation with an online asynchronous orientation was conducted with three sections of Social Work Research Methods, a required course in the University of Iowa's Master of Social Work program. Two sections of the course received an online orientation involving short videos, text and…

Little research has been conducted examining advocacy efforts in the school library field despite the fact that program advocate is a prominent role for school librarians. One element of advocacy is the engagement in political initiatives that may affect school library programs. This case study investigates the effectiveness of one advocacy effort…

A supportive school reading culture is an educative context in which there is availability, opportunity, encouragement and support for reading. Little is known about whether Australian schools actively foster reading cultures that are supportive of reading for pleasure. In their role as reading advocates, teacher librarians may be uniquely…

The article is based on a study conducted among students in selected Ghanaian universities in the year 2015 to confirm the continued maintenance (or improvement) of the minimum quality standards, based on which accreditation had been granted to their respective institutions. Although the students might not have been conversant with the accrediting…

University researchers are asked to make their work relevant and accessible to people beyond their research fields, increasingly by undertaking public engagement with science themselves. However, academic outreach often only reaches an already-science-attentive audience through traditional museum visits or lecture-style presentations. Even…

Institutions are applying methods and practices from data analytics under the umbrella term of "learning analytics" to inform instruction, library practices, and institutional research, among other things. This study reports findings from interviews with professional advisors at a public higher education institution. It reports their…

"Sense of place" no longer applies only to the physical library. All students are distance learners to one extent or another, and all distance services must be considered as a single virtual learning commons. Librarians at Bucks County (PA) Community College implement and integrate current teaching, learning, virtual reference, and mobile access…

What is the common goal of our school? Why is this important? How does this build community? What are Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) and where does the library media program fit in? All these questions swirled in the author's head during the first few months they were opening their new middle school. She had been hired as the school…

This article describes how York University analyzed the results from its 2010-11 implementation of the Measuring the Impact of Networked Electronic Services for Libraries survey to measure value of investments in e-resources. The results were assessed through two variables: e-resources used by faculty when carrying out funded and non-funded…