The purpose of this study was to identify and understand the management of resources by library directors at 151 Public and Private Carnegie classified extensive university libraries in an environment of limited funding for higher education. This study examined the following research questions: 1. What resource allocation strategies are used by…

Assessment in United States higher education has become very important in recent years. Virtually all colleges and universities are now striving to prove through empirical evidence that they are committed to improving student learning. Created in late 2005, the US Department of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education was charged…

This article argues for the incorporation of library instruction into research methods courses to foster information literacy skills important to disciplinary specialization. The evidence in support emerges from a collaborative teaching and assessment project conducted by a research methods instructor and a faculty instructional librarian. The…

"Research Library Issues" ("RLI") focuses on current and emerging topics that are strategically important to research libraries. The articles explore issues, share information, pose critical questions, and provide examples. This issue includes the following articles: (1) ARL Library Budgets after the Great Recession, 2011-13…

This research provides the first review of publicly available assessment information found on Association of Research Libraries (ARL) members' websites. After providing an overarching review of benchmarking assessment data, and of professionally recommended assessment models, this paper examines if libraries contextualized their assessment…

The digital humanities (DH) are attracting considerable attention and funding at the same time that this nascent field is striving for an identity. Some research libraries are making significant investments by creating digital humanities centers. However, questions about whether such investments are warranted persist across the cultural heritage…

With the advent of the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education in 2015, librarians everywhere have tried to adapt their existing information literacy sessions to incorporate the revised concepts. This article discusses how the librarian responsible for a series of four labs in a first-year course reformed the lab content…

The transformation of the first floor of Joyner Library into the Collaborative Learning Center produced significant changes to collection and user spaces. Collaboration, in this context, refers to students engaged in teamwork with technology and support services. A Culture War emerged when some faculty, displeased with the loss of the traditional…

With the growing population of undergraduate students on our campus and an increased focus on their success, librarians at a large midwestern university were interested in the citation management styles of this university cohort. Our university library spends considerable resources each year to maintain and promote access to the robust…

Reference transactions in academic libraries have been on the decline since mid-1990. The Academic Library Survey from the National Center for Education Statistics shows an average drop of 25% in reference use from 1996-2004 with higher numbers at some institutions such as the University of Maryland which plummeted 47% (Martell, 2008). The…

Questions about the optimal way to present repository content to authors, submitters, and end-users, prompted this study. The authors examined, through an observation and a survey, the institutional repositories of peer institutions in the ARL for good practices related to the presentation and organization of faculty-authored institutional…

The Mississippi State University Libraries' Virtual Reference Service collected statistics about virtual reference usage. Analysis of the data collected by an entry survey from chat and e-mail transactions provided librarians with concrete information about what patron groups were the highest and lowest users of virtual reference services. These…

Since it was released on November 30, 2022, ChatGPT has offered numerous opportunities for higher education professors to improve their course offerings. However, not all information provided by the application is accurate. The application has been known to yield highly inaccurate information with high confidence. Yet, with that knowledge, ChatGPT…

The last ten years in school library research reflect an expanded definition of information literacy along with a stronger emphasis on in-depth information literacy development, concluding that a fundamental shift in instruction provided by school librarians is needed; one that not only helps students find information, but develops students'…

The extent of U.S. librarians' collaboration with international partners in the area of scholarly activity and research publications is still unexplored. Guided by Jane Knight's "At Home" framework for international research and scholarly activity, this study examines the extent of scholarly activity between librarians from the United…