The purpose of this study is to learn more about virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) practices at the United States' top one hundred university libraries, as well as how they are engaging with the metaverse. We conducted qualitative and descriptive analysis on the websites of the top one hundred university libraries in the United…

Expanding on previous research, the authors applied quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate Web usability policies, standards, and guidelines (PSGs); resources; and usability testing, including mobile testing and usability laboratories, at the academic members of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). Survey results indicated…

Makerspaces continue to grow in popularity in library ecosystems, yet no one has done a census on important data points, such as total active makerspaces, planned makerspaces, and types of makerspaces in public colleges and universities in the United States. The objective of this report is to gather baseline data on makerspaces, the majority of…

This exploratory study seeks to gather preliminary information about the roles that academic librarians in the United States (US) and Canada play in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) work on their campuses. It also provides insight into how librarians at US Carnegie Research 1 (R1) classified universities and U15 Group of Canadian…

The purpose of this study is to explore the realization of users' information rights (IRs) in the smart service of university libraries. Based on the LibQUAL model, principal component analysis (PCA) is used to measure the quality of smart services in university libraries. The contribution weight of various services to the realization of IRs is…

This article considers the role of teaching and learning departments within academic libraries and how they may differ from reference and instruction departments. The author used website analysis to profile and compare the two types of departments across multiple institutions. Initial findings indicate that the two have several roles in common,…

An increasingly complex and demanding research landscape has seen university libraries rapidly evolve their services. While research data management, bibliometrics, and research impact services have predominantly featured in the literature to date, the full scope of support libraries are currently providing to their institutions is unknown. This…

This article explores the response of the Science and Engineering Library team at Manchester Metropolitan University to the COVID-19 pandemic. It examines how the team's experience supporting distance-learning programmes acted as both a dress rehearsal and a road map for Library provision during the pandemic. In particular, the changing role of…

Currently "Big Data" is an emerging field that presents several Information Technology challenges regarding the capture, storage search, structure, and visualization of this data. The real challenge for organizations is to find ways to extract value from it and provide better services to their clients. The data generated in academic and…

This paper examines the University of Sydney Library's development and piloting of a methodology to survey its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural collections, to enhance catalogue metadata and allow culturally sensitive material to be identified and protected. The research falls broadly within the interpretivist epistemology and draws…

This study has examined librarians' possession of information and communication technology (ICT) skills and knowledge that are requisite to practicing embedded librarianship in Tanzanian academic libraries. An exploratory cross-sectional design and qualitative and quantitative approaches have been employed by the study to collect data from 166…

Liaison (or subject specialist) librarians are routinely identified as essential to the sustained success of academic libraries. Yet despite the purported centrality of liaisons to the mission of their institutions, many libraries have struggled to define the role of the subject specialist. These attempts at definition have resulted in a…

The authors surveyed the websites of Canadian academic research libraries to better understand the current landscape of digital humanities and digital scholarship research guides and their content. While only a third of the surveyed library websites provided guides of this nature, an analysis of their content showed a variety of resources and…

This study uses qualitative and quantitative data to identify science library trends at Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member institutions. Our recent count found 69% of all ARL academic institutions have at least one science library. Comparing our data to a 2010 study of American ARL institutions, the number of science libraries at…

This paper describes an investigation into whether institutional repositories at member libraries of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) provide publicly available metadata documentation via the repositories' websites. The study compares the results of a September 2017 survey with findings from a review of ARL institutional repository…