The changes experienced in the digital era require academic library staff to constantly update, expand, and develop their skills in order to carry out their roles efficiently and remain relevant in the provision of services to clients. Consequently, academic libraries have been among the first organizations to adopt knowledge sharing as a means to…

A previous study of creative writers' self-reports revealed important differences between research as it is carried out in the context of creative writing and the more scholarly types of research academic librarians often focus on. However, that study left many questions open. For this follow-up study, the author interviewed published creative…

Through a survey of more than 200 US academic science librarians, we investigated the perceived value of subject specialization; looked for trends toward or away from science subject specialization; and analyzed predictions about the future of science liaison librarianship. Results showed that science librarians perceive subject specialization…

Staff reorganizations and department mergers are common strategies libraries use to respond to changing needs and economic pressures. To make organizational changes work well, however, librarians need to consider how best to bring people on board and enable them to thrive in the new environment. This article argues that the creation of a core…

The clock and calendar regulate many library activities, but the seasonal and temporal dimensions of libraries are largely unexplored. Intrigued by observations of colleagues' temporal attitudes and behavior, the authors drew on the work of sociologist Eviatar Zerubavel to investigate the perceptions of time, schedules, and urgency among…

In Kentucky the school library is regarded as the hub of the school community and integral to teaching and learning. The power of the school library lies in the programming, resources, services, and instruction it provides educators and learners to support learning. Stakeholders come to appreciate Kentucky's school libraries because of their…

There is an established history of academic libraries collaborating with their institutions' athletics departments to provide learning and research support to student-athletes in order to achieve positive educational outcomes. It is rarer to find documented the effect that athletics has had on the professional life of an academic librarian. The…

This paper presents assessment data from a first-year writing library partnership to examine the relationship between student source use and written synthesis. It finds that first-year students could locate peer-reviewed, scholarly sources but that these sources were poorly integrated in their arguments--if they were used at all. In contrast, it…

Like schools, curricula are socially constructed and constituted within broader social, political, and historical relations of power, powerfully shaping students' beliefs and attitudes about themselves and their relationship toward the world. In light of this, the importance of literature selection cannot be overstated. School-sanctioned texts…

When the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were adopted in many states, it was only one piece of the pie called Race to the Top (RttT). As states competed and clamored to win the Race to the Top dollars, they knew it came with strings attached. The biggest piece of string is called APPR, or Annual Professional Performance Review--and it is more…

Teaching is a difficult and time-consuming job, but the rewards teachers receive from their students are unquestionably worth it. The good news is that in every school, there are people that they work with who can help to make their daily life much easier--but they are not always the people that they would think to ask for help. New teachers often…

This article presents an interview with Karen Glover of Georgia Tech, a key person behind the planning of the Access Services Conference held last fall, and now going into its second year. Glover started working in libraries as a part-time library assistant at her local public library during her high school years. She later became a Circulation…

The gap between the reading and writing skills of high school graduates and the demands of freshman college coursework and employers was one of the greatest concerns when the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers were developing the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts (CCSS-ELA). A…

A reference/instruction librarian used targeted outreach to furnish library services to faculty and students while assigned to work in the College of Education during a library renovation project. Due to the success of this temporary assignment, the author has subsequently maintained regular office hours in the College to provide research…

Historically, it's been an unavoidable truth: IT people and library people have not been inclined to come to the concept of service with the same view. For IT, it's been all about keeping the servers and systems up, the websites going, and the help desk calls and their turnaround times to a minimum. For library professionals, service has meant…