Rapid developments in technology, as well as changes in areas such as scholarly communication, data management, and higher education pedagogy are affecting user expectations and forcing academic ...libraries to develop new resources and service areas. No library can respond to every new trend in the field, but where are academic libraries generally placing their priorities right now, and to what extent are they responding to emerging trends? Through a content analysis of academic library strategic plans, this study examines the stated directions and goals of libraries to discover the extent to which they are monitoring and addressing emerging and traditional program and service areas, providing a perspective on how academic libraries are addressing current issues, and how they plan to allocate resources in response to trends.
Academic libraries are facing enormous pressures that require them to respond and adapt in order to remain relevant. Rapid developments in technology, as well as changes in areas such as scholarly communication, data management, and higher education pedagogy are affecting user expectations and forcing academic libraries to develop new resources and service areas. At the same time, these libraries must balance new initiatives with core service areas such as instruction and collection development. In addition to responding to current trends, academic libraries are also being challenged to anticipate future needs and to develop innovative initiatives to meet those needs.
No library can respond to every new trend in the field, nor should they. Decisions about how to prioritize and allocate resources should be aligned with the mission and goals of the library's parent institution. Colleges and universities are facing their own pressures, driven by increasing demands from stakeholders to hold themselves accountable, especially in terms of student outcomes such as persistence, graduation, and employment, as well as student learning outcomes, or changes in knowledge and behavior as a result of educational programs. In turn, these institutions are looking to their departments to demonstrate how their programs and services support and further the mission and goals of the college. In this environment, academic libraries must monitor both the trends in the library and information science field as well as those in higher education more generally in order to determine where to focus resources and efforts.
But where are academic libraries generally placing their priorities right now, and to what extent are they responding to emerging trends? Library and information science (LIS) literature is rife with articles and reports that track trends in the field, make predictions, and advise libraries on how to implement plans and programs related to those trends. Few studies, however, have examined academic libraries' planning documents to see how they are prioritizing among the competing issues and challenges facing them. This study aims to address the gap in the literature. Through a content analysis of academic library strategic plans, this study examines the stated directions and goals of the library to discover the extent to which they are monitoring and addressing emerging and traditional program and service areas. Academic librarians and library directors will be interested to see which issues and challenges are receiving the most attention, and how their peers are prioritizing those areas. The study will also offer campus administrators a perspective on how academic libraries are addressing current issues, and how they plan to allocate resources in response to trends. Library faculty might also be interested in the results, as understanding which trends are having the most impact in their field could inform curricular decisions and program emphases.
Learning new technology is essential for students and scholars in higher education to engage in learning and research of today. Previous studies have reported various barriers to technology ...acceptance and application in academic communities. To foster active engagement in technology-enhanced research and learning, academic libraries could serve as a technology hub for their communities. Many researchers have already explored the role of academic libraries in promoting information literacy as well as digital and data literacy. However, technology education in library instruction, which helps students and scholars develop such literacies, has not been a major topic in the existing literature. Even when studies deal with technology related content, their topics of instruction concentrate largely on data science skills and tools. The existing literature does not capture a comprehensive landscape of what instructional support the academic libraries provide in terms of technology skills and tools, including but not limited to data science techniques.
The goal of this study is to present an overview of academic library instruction for technology education for their communities. This study examines library workshops offered by 43 four-year college libraries in the US. The titles and descriptions of the workshops were manually collected and analyzed to understand the content of library instruction using both quantitative and qualitative analysis methods. The findings of this study suggest that American academic libraries play an important role in educating their patrons a wide range of technology for their academic success in technology-mediated learning and research environments. They teach various technologies for research, teaching and learning, career support, conventional library instruction, and many other purposes. We found that academic libraries teach not only popular and common tools, but also specialized and unique tools for certain fields.
In recent years, applying the concepts of Universal Design to higher education has garnered increasing attention from scholars. In an educational environment, Universal Design principles seek to make ...education as usable and accessible as possible across a wide range of students. Library instruction is one venue that would benefit from applying Universal Design, but many academic librarians teach under a one-shot instruction mode, which limits their ability to incorporate many of the strategies described in the existing literature. The purpose of this article is to identify Universal Design strategies that suit one-shot instruction, thus lowering the barrier for librarians who wish to learn about and incorporate Universal Design in their instruction.
The study is on enhancing serials management in university libraries in Edo and Delta states Nigeria. Descriptive survey was used for the study. Data for the study was gathered through structured ...questionnaire. The population of the study was 65 librarians from the university libraries, namely, Delta State University Library Abraka, Delta State; Ambrose Alli University Library, Ekpoma Edo State and Federal University of Petroleum Resources Library, Effurun, Delta State. Total number of questionnaire distributed was 65, but 49 questionnaires were found usable, for the study. The items were structured on a 4-point Likert Scale (Strongly Agree, Agree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree). Data analysis was done using frequency count and simple percentage. The results of the study show that University libraries rendered current awareness, photocopy and electronic journal services, they also organise and provide serials for their users. Some of the problems militating against the management of serials among others, are lack of funds, power failure, inadequate facilities and frequent changes in serials titles. The study recommends that infrastructure stability and access to utilities be addressed in university research plans and budgets. Publishers and vendors should also maintain awareness of the digital divide and continue to invest in print publishing to meet global information needs.
Modern libraries are reimagining their spaces as more than repositories for books. The Play-and-Learn Spaces project married developmental science with the changing nature of 21st century libraries. ...The study asked if it is possible to augment learning in informal spaces using the built environment to encourage discourse and interaction. For this project, the library space was reconstructed such that a corner became a climbing wall on which children could create words by following varied paths up the wall's letter-filled surface. Seating was transformed into large movable “Tangram”-type pieces and a stage, complete with magnetic words, invited children to create stories on the wall and complete story-related activities through socio-dramatic play. Using naturalistic observation, results demonstrated that the use of the Play-and-Learn spaces was associated with increases in the kinds of caregiver and child conversation and interaction known to support language, literacy and STEM skills. These results suggest that libraries can become part of a new learning culture that impacts city residents at the places they naturally go.
•Children's library spaces were redesigned to encourage play and learning.•Researchers worked with designers to integrate developmental science theory and research into the installations.•Naturalistic observation captured caregiver and child discourse and interaction.•Use of the spaces was associated with increases in conversation and interaction.
Academic librarians increasingly adopt roles as campus leaders to promote the adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) and other strategies to encourage making textbook affordability for students ...an institutional priority. When it comes to a statewide strategy to support academic library efforts for textbook affordability, Pennsylvania is lagging more progressive states such as Oregon, Georgia, Ohio, Virginia and Louisiana. This article makes a case for and lays out a strategy by which Pennsylvania’s academic librarians can develop a statewide initiative to tackle the challenge of textbook affordability together in order to achieve substantial progress.
Librarians at Penn State University piloted the online appointment-scheduling tool YouCanBook.me to determine its effectiveness in facilitating a high number of research consultations and improving ...an embedded service model. Librarians sought to leverage the tool to work with as many students as possible while balancing other duties. This article details using YouCanBook.me for this specific application, provides data and evaluation of the pilot, and explores possibilities for scaling usage of this scheduling tool in other library settings, both large and small.
David Keith Jones/Images of Africa Photobank Alamy Stock Photo Nassiri-Ansari and McCoy frame their analysis within the present movement to decolonise global health. A central concern of that ...movement is power—the steep inequalities in power between high-income universities and those in what these authors call the “Global South”. If we know, for example, that gender-diverse research teams produce more novel scientific ideas (and we do), then rankings might consider monitoring gender diversity in universities.
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