Academic libraries are increasingly asked to articulate connections between the work of library staff and student success. This article discusses how a team of librarians participating in CARLI Counts, an immersive professional development program funded by a Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Grant through the Institute of Museum and Library…

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,…

In this article, the author explores why a school librarian's value should be wrapped up in books. First, reading is a foundational skill, and memories are built around who people are before and who they are after reading a book. School librarians get to be a part of that transformation. Second, books still make up the heart of a physical library,…

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted libraries tremendously and changed the way services were offered to patrons. Dahlgren Memorial Library was no exception and the library strived to find ways to keep their student assistants employed. This article will discuss how the library trained its student assistants to cover the chat system and work on projects…

The primary goal of this study was to identify gaps in curriculum coverage and required skills for research support services (RSS) in university libraries in the Punjab province of Pakistan. A convergent parallel mixed methods design was used to meet its objective. To collect data for the quantitative strand, across-sectional survey with a…

Remote reference consultations have considerably increased due to the need to provide remote services during the COVID-19 pandemic. Conducting reference consultations via videoconferencing not only offers many benefits to student researchers; it also presents an opportunity for librarians to embrace a learner-centered teaching mindset when…

Reference services in academic libraries often focus on user education and giving students the skills to perform their own searches. This article describes a new Research Concierge Service established in response to the COVID-19 pandemic by Ozarks Technical Community College (OTC) in southwest Missouri. The service entails library staff curating a…

Information behavior is an important area of conceptual knowledge for reference service providers, as it provides structure for understanding users' information seeking and use. This study explores the extent to which information behavior theories, models, and concepts have been integrated into professional education for reference and information…

As science and technology libraries continue to evolve, specialized research support services are developed and offered at academic institutions or research organizations. Making sense of this changing landscape and determining the best programs for an institution can be a daunting task, especially for early-career librarians. This article aims to…

The paper aims to discuss ChatGPT and its role in academic libraries. It identifies the key areas where ChatGPT can be implemented in libraries to improve various services and the overall work experience of academics, along with the risk factors associated with ChatGPT. Research finds that ChatGPT can be aided with many library services such as…

During the 2020 and 2021 summer semesters, the University of Michigan Biological Station (UMBS) transitioned to hybrid classes that were primarily distance learning with two-week inperson sections. The library offered both synchronous and asynchronous reference assistance over the summer term. An analysis showed that students favored using the…

This literature review explores the impact of COVID-19 on reference and research services in academic libraries. The first half of the review identifies changes and initiatives during the previous ten years using meaningful examples of changes. Gathering information from listservs, conference schedules,trade publications, websites, and emerging…

Eight scholarly papers and seven abstracts comprise the content of the twenty-third annual Brick & Click Libraries Conference, held annually at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Missouri. The 2023 paper and abstract titles include: (1) The Reliability and Usability of ChatGPT for Library Metadata (Jenny Bodenhamer); (2) A…

This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness and potential utility of using machine learning and natural language processing techniques to develop models that can reliably predict the relative difficulty of incoming chat reference questions. Using a relatively large sample size of chat transcripts (N = 15,690), an empirical experimental design…

The problem undertaken in this study was the impact of the COVID-19 on academic-library directors at small, private, liberal-arts institutions in Wisconsin. The purpose of this study was to understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic closures on collection development and reference interviews. The participants were seven academic-library…