This report explains the key role that school librarians and libraries should play in state- and district-wide efforts to transition to digital learning, or the effective use of technology to improve teaching and learning. The report calls for district and school leaders, policymakers, and boards of education to support, encourage, and fund the…

Academic reference librarians frequently work with students who are not aware of their professional roles. In online interactions, a student might not even realize that the librarian is a person. The ways students initiate conversations reveal their understanding of the mutual roles involved in reference encounters. Conversation analysis of live…

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 paper presents the results of a study on the understanding of the term information literacy of primary and secondary school students, from the fifth grade of elementary school to the fourth year of high school at the local level, and who are members of the City Library in Imotski. The study examined 98 members of the City Library, through a…

Over the next few years, librarians at many Australian universities will participate in the creation of local Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). This article aims to prepare librarians for this task. It begins by summarising the development of the MOOC concept and then moves on to review the growing literature on MOOCs and librarians. It…

This article is presented by four librarians who have come together as a creative team at Ethical Culture School in New York City. As elementary school librarians, their goal is to develop and support curriculum where children's developmental needs are given central importance. By putting the thinking, interests, information needs, and the…

The changing research and information environment requires a reexamination of library support for research. This study considers research-related attitudes and practices to identify elements indicating readiness or resistance to expanding the library's role in research support. A survey of faculty conducted at the University of Nevada Las Vegas…

Some classes of Internet users have specific information needs and specialized information-seeking behaviors. For example, educators who are designing a course might create a syllabus, recommend books, create lecture slides, and use tools as lecture aid. All of these resources are available online, but are scattered across a large number of…

This Libraries and Policy essay explores the interrelationships between the public library goals of supporting democracy and remaining an apolitical institution and the expectations for demonstration of value and economic contribution at a time in which public discourse emphasizes austerity from public institutions. Libraries' positions on…

Selection for digitization is about more than which items to scan. Selection is what shapes the online collections that are built by libraries, archives, historical societies, and other cultural heritage institutions. By selecting well, institutions can concentrate on the parts of their collections that are best suited to digitization, that make…

Research support services are growing areas of importance in academic libraries and are part of the libraries' larger goal to provide wider support for research-related services. Ithaka's "Library Survey 2010" indicated that research support services, along with teaching facilitation, are the two growth areas projected by library directors. In…

This book explains how teachers can set up and run a successful school library. In it you will find advice and information on how to: (1) set up a small library and build bookshelves; (2) select books for your library; (3) make a written record of your school's books, pamphlets and other library stock such as newspapers, magazines, audio tapes and…

With their explosive sales and widespread availability over the past few years, e-books have definitively proven that they're here to stay. In this sequel to her best-selling book of the same title, expert Polanka dives even deeper into the world of digital distribution. Contributors from across the e-book world offer their perspectives on what's…

This volume offers the first comprehensive guide to how high-impact practices (HIPs) are being implemented in online environments and how they can be adjusted to meet the needs of online learners. This multi-disciplinary approach will assist faculty and administrators to effectively implement HIPs in distance education courses and online programs.…

The purpose of this research was to determine how information synthesis skills can be taught effectively, and to discover how the level of synthesis in student writing can be effectively measured. The intervention was an information synthesis lesson that broke down the synthesis process into sequenced tasks. Researchers created a rubric which they…