Electronic books are evolving at a dizzying pace, challenging academic librarians to keep patrons informed about the growing number of features of these resources and their various and varied limitations. It sometimes seems as if students are pleasantly surprised by the ease with which electronic books are accessible as often as they are…

The necessity of library and information research is pointed up by referring to some of important categories of research now in progress. Reasons are advanced for the necessity such research in Australia and ways suggested in which students wishing to make a career research and practitioners anxious for research opportunities may be accommodated.…

The paper describes the processes and outcomes of the ranking of LIS journal titles by Australia's LIS researchers during 2007-8, first through the Australian federal government's Research Quality Framework (RQF) process, and then by its replacement, the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative. The requirement to rank the journals'…

Women who promoted library services to children in the United States in the late nineteenth century introduced the systematic use of survey research on library practice to the field of professional librarianship. They created a series of qualitative survey-based reports, the "Reading of the Young" reports, which were presented at ALA conferences…

This article discusses the development of academic research in the LIS domain and the purpose of LIS research. It is argued that there are several constituent parts of the research tradition, both theoretical and empirical, and that this has created tensions and misunderstandings between researchers and practitioners. Against this background, the…

Studies of data-driven deselection overwhelmingly emphasise the importance of circulation counts and date-of-last-use in the weeding process. When applied to research collections, however, this approach fails to take account of highly influential and significant titles that have not been of interest to large numbers of borrowers but that have been…

E-books constitute major challenges for library collections generally and present fundamental problems for consortial collection development specifically. The Triangle Research Libraries Network (TRLN) and Oxford University Press (OUP) have created a mutually equitable and financially sustainable model for the consortial acquisition of e-books…

In this interview with Caroline Coward, Library Group supervisor for JPL's Enterprise and Information Systems Engineering Section, Coward discusses her own career journey, the importance of high-impact practices, and what employers--specifically NASA and JPL--look at when hiring interns and recent graduates. Other topics discussed include how a…

Science and engineering libraries have an important role to play in preserving the intellectual content in research areas of the departments they serve. This study employs bibliographic data from the Web of Science database to examine how much research material is required to cover 90% of faculty citations in civil engineering and computer…

It is no secret that library budgets are in a downward spiral like the rest of the economy. The recent annual budget survey by the "Library Journal" indicates that per capita funding for libraries will decline 1.6%, and total library budgets will be reduced by 2.6% in FY 2010. Librarians are all too familiar with this bad news, and some of them…

Shared leadership theory recognizes leader influence throughout the organization, not just from the top down. This study explores how middle managers from 22 academic libraries in the Pacific West perceive their own agreement, participation and recognition of shared leadership. This survey and framework is the first to examine the extent shared…

The year 2010 saw a major revolution in tablet technology with the introduction of the Apple iPad. Curious about the potential of this new technology for libraries, a group of librarians at Ryerson University in Toronto seized an opportunity to investigate the emerging role of the tablet in the daily academic lives of students. The group found…

In recent years public libraries have experimented with user-generated or community-contributed content through the interactive tools of Web 2.0. For some commentators this not just establishes a new relationship between libraries and their publics, but signals the end of information hegemony and an "expert paradigm". Such claims need to…

Research support services at The University of Queensland Library (UQ Library) have evolved in response to the global and national drivers, which have impacted on broader University strategy. UQ Library's success in responding to these drivers has involved leveraging the information within, and capacity of, the institutional repository, the core…

Since 2008, Victoria University (VU) Library has employed 20 or more Student Assistants annually who work on a casual basis for up to 12 hours per week during terms/semesters to staff the Library in Study Hall mode (where there is self-service access to PCs and collections and limited staff assistance). This initiative appears to have been highly…