The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) documents dimensions of quality in undergraduate education and provides information and assistance to colleges, universities, and other organizations to improve student learning. Its primary activity is annually surveying college students to assess the extent to which they engage in educational…

A survey of New Zealand academic subject/reference librarians was conducted in mid-2011 to identify the most highly valued knowledge, skills and competencies of reference librarians working in libraries in the tertiary sector. The project was part of an international collaborative project involving 13 countries. The results from New Zealand show…

This study investigated how school librarians perceive their status within the school by looking at factors suggested by the literature as either impacting on, or impacted by, status: their relationships with their colleagues and supervisors, their role within the school, job satisfaction, and views on their careers and their training. Most…

As technology continues to advance, libraries in Europe and America continue to improve upon their virtual reference services by employing new Web technologies and applying them to existing services. West African academic libraries have begun providing resources electronically to their users but still typically lag behind in the services they…

Using data collected via a Web survey instrument, this study examines the leadership engagement of new professionals in Canadian libraries and explores their interest in and willingness to take up leadership roles as well as the barriers and opportunities to leadership that they perceive to exist within the workplace. (Contains 7 tables.)

More than half the participants in a survey of Canadian research university librarians indicated that scholarship activities were required or encouraged at their universities, yet most university librarians have year-round schedules of assigned duties that present challenges to the engagement in sustained, meaningful scholarship. Full-time…

The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) documents dimensions of quality in undergraduate education and provides information and assistance to colleges, universities, and other organizations to improve student learning. Its primary activity is annually surveying college students to assess the extent to which they engage in educational…

The "New South Wales Learning 2.0" training program is being made available to the entire NSW public library work force of over 2300 people in 2008-2009. This paper is a snapshot of the impact of the course as at September 2008, five months after it was launched. It explores how the training impacted on the staff skill levels, knowledge,…

The mere fact that a library service is being used does not mean that the service makes a difference or has a positive impact on the user. This has significant implications for Special Library and Information Services (SL&IS) that have to constantly prove that they add value. Because of the difficulty of measuring impact effectively, the…

At the end of 2007, SirsiDynix introduced the first version of Symphony, its new flagship Integrated Library System (ILS). This article begins with a look at the evolution of Symphony, user reactions to Symphony, and Symphony's design and functionality. The authors, along with a team of librarians from various functional areas, have completed…

This research set out to explore the attitudes of school, academic and public librarians towards marketing libraries. The main question that was examined is whether personality characteristics such as empowerment, extroversion and resistance to change influence librarians' attitudes towards the marketing of libraries. One hundred and fifty-six…

Using LibQUAL+[R] data provided by 295,355 of the participants who completed the LibQUAL+[R] survey in 2003, 2004, and 2005, the present study was conducted to address three research questions. First, what differences, if any, have occurred across time in the use by (a) undergraduates, (b) graduate students/postgraduates, and (c) faculty of…

The advent of policies at research-funding organizations requiring grantees to make their funded research openly accessible alters the life cycle of scholarly research. This survey-based study explores the approaches that libraries and research administration offices at the major Canadian universities are employing to support the…

This article reports on selected results of a comprehensive survey of children's reading in England, carried out online in 2005 by the National Centre for Research in Children's Literature at Roehampton University. With 4182 responses from children living in England aged from 4 to 16 years, the survey is a follow-up to a similar study completed in…

This article reports on a project which was undertaken in 2006 to investigate the current modes and methods for delivering reference services in Australian academic libraries. The project included a literature review to assist in providing a definition of reference services as well as a snapshot of statistics showing staff and patron numbers from…