This article begins with a brief description of access and affordability and their relationship to equity, diversity, and inclusion within the higher education sector today. Because the authors work at a Jesuit Catholic institution, awareness and appreciation of the call to uphold access and affordability at Jesuit institutions are also important.…

As academic libraries prioritize accessibility for all individuals, they have carried out transformations of their physical and virtual spaces. For example, they have purchased new hardware, software, and furniture; adjusted websites for screen readers; modified handouts used in instruction; and advocated for change with vendors of leased and…

The OCLC Research report "Library Collaboration as a Strategic Choice: Evaluating Options for Acquiring Capacity" explores library collaboration as a key strategy for academic libraries in acquiring needed capacity, but also contextualizes it as one sourcing approach among a range of options available to libraries. The decision for…

The problem undertaken in this study was the impact of the COVID-19 on academic-library directors at small, private, liberal-arts institutions in Wisconsin. The purpose of this study was to understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic closures on collection development and reference interviews. The participants were seven academic-library…

Libraries continue to spearhead initiatives to incentivize instructors to adopt, adapt, and create open educational resources (OER). However, these programs often do not explicitly require educators to preserve the OER they create. Drawing on an analysis of semi-structured interviews with six experts, this article presents considerations for…

Unlike students in traditional Chinese universities using textbooks published in China, students in transnational universities face unresolved issues in the acquisition and distribution of imported English language textbooks. The challenges, which have persisted for over a decade, include delays in delivery caused by international shipment,…

The global COVID-19 pandemic has demanded new strategies and, at the same time, granted new opportunities for the university regarding community engagement. Online education has become a challenge for all universities and libraries around the world. In this context, the Universidad Viña del Mar (Chile), articulating a collaboration between its…

Despite the widespread adoption of streaming video by academic libraries, there has been little discussion about how video content is discovered and accessed through the library catalog as compared to vendor platforms. This article explores the current status of video resources in the library catalog to better understand how users find and access…

Improvisation is an effective tool for developing actors' skills. It can also be a powerful and unique means for enhancing customer service skills in the contemporary academic library environment. Interactions between library users and librarians / library staff can often be complicated and require excellent listening and communication skills.…

If an item is not readily available in an academic library's collection, is it quicker to buy it or does is make better sense to borrow it? At a public, four-year institution, acquisitions and interlibrary loan (ILL) are exploring a new relationship to improve the users' experience. The question is determining what triggers the decision to borrow…

This study investigated 299 chat reference interactions from an academic library consortium for instances of teaching and compared these against other characteristics of the chat, such as question content, staff type, user status, user satisfaction, institutional affiliation, length, and shift busyness. Statistical analysis revealed that teaching…

Adopting a demand-oriented perspective helps librarians to understand their users better. Involving them in ongoing changes has the potential to have a lasting positive effect on the satisfaction of existing users and the recruitment of new ones. Three case-studies, which involved creating new learning spaces at the University Library of…

This large-scale study was conducted for the purposes of determining how representative library users are compared to the whole student population, to explore how library services contribute to student success, and to position the library to be included in the institution's learning analytics landscape. To that end, data were collected as students…

An academic library's single service point, where users can get answers and help with their library needs in one place, is often the first and most popular place used by students. Studies assessing desk design are rare but needed to help guide planning for renovation or service model change. This study investigated an academic library's service…

Makerspaces have continued to be a popular addition to the services offered by libraries. This article will address the creation and implementation of one at a mid-sized medical library. The writer will summarize their personal experience of the steps taken towards opening the makerspace and give insight into the process. This article will also…