Search results

Using the HKUST Learning Commons as a case study, this paper seeks to reveal a number of insights on how to effectively engage different user groups within the university.

The case study focuses on the user‐group engagement process, highlighting the promotion plan and factors that enhance the user‐group engagement.

Two positive outcomes of the engagement were identified: the diversity of learning activities in the Learning Commons, and the elevated image of the library and librarians.

The experience at HKUST reported in this paper highlights the need for libraries moving to the new “commons” service model to actively promote the facilities by engaging different user groups. The process itself is a necessary component to the success of the new service and facilities.

The case study uses the user engagement framework to steer the promotion effort. The outcomes of the process have long‐term implications for the image and identity of libraries, and subsequently enhance the library's potential in fund raising and resource allocation.

Purpose – The integration of librarians and technologists to deliver information services represents a new and costly organizational challenge for many library administrators. To understand how to control the costs of integration, this study uses structural contingency theory to study the coordination of librarians and technologists within the information commons.

Design/methodology/approach – This study tests the structural contingency theory expectation that an organization will achieve higher levels of performance when there is a positive relationship between the degree of workflow interdependence and the complexity of coordinative structures necessary to integrate these workflows. This expectation was tested by (a) identifying and collecting a sample of information common; (b) developing and validating survey instruments to test the proposition; and (c) quantitatively analyzing the data to test the proposed contingency theory relationship.

Findings – The contingency theory expectations were confirmed by finding both a positive relationship between coordination and interdependence and a positive relationship between perceptions of performance and degree of congruency between interdependence and coordination.

Limitations – The findings of this study are limited to both the context of an information common and the structures tested. Future research should seek to both broaden the context in which these findings are applicable, and test additional structural relationships as proposed by contingency theory

Practical implications – This study contributes to the library profession in a number of ways. First, it suggests that managers can improve IC performance by matching coordination structures to the degree of interdependence. For instance, when librarians and technologists are strictly co-located, managers should coordinate workflows using less resource-intensive policies rather than meetings. Second, the instruments developed in this study will improve the library manager's ability to measure and report unit interdependence and coordination in a valid and reliable manner. Lastly, it also contributes to the study of structural contingency theory by presenting one of the first empirical confirmations of a positive relationship between interdependence and coordination.

Originality/value – This study represents one of the first empirical confirmations of the structural contingency theory expectations of both a positive relationship between workflow interdependence and coordination, and a positive relationship between performance and coordination's fit to workflow interdependence. These findings are of value to both organizational theorists and to administrators of information commons.

Collection content is no longer the primary distinctive signifier of excellence in the present libraries. In an information market where technology has increased access to content, thereby providing resources at one’s fingertips, the provision of services is increasingly becoming a distinctive signifier of excellence and quality. In such an open/service-oriented marketplace, what are the services that are signifiers of excellence and consequently distinguish a library? This paper aims to review select literature within the USA to identify the services that are signifiers of excellence and that will consequently distinguish a library in the current era and investigate the extent to which said services identified in the review of the literature are provided by the University of the West Indies (UWI) Mona library, but focus specifically on only those that meet the additional criteria of placing the UWI Mona library as either the first to introduce the service in Jamaica or as the only library in Jamaica with the particular service offering. These two additional criteria provide the added signature or uniqueness essential to being distinguished.

Through the use of a mixed methods research, this paper highlights library service offerings considered as distinctive signifiers of excellence within the American literature and also within the UWI Mona Library – that will distinguish a library.

This paper reveals services incorporating technology, the library as a place/space, teaching and research and personal attention to users as distinctive signifiers of excellence. In this regard, within the UWI Mona Library, services offered such as the Virtual Reference Service, Extended Opening Service, Halls of Residence Librarian Service, Information Commons Service, Information Literacy Service and the West Indies and Special Collection Research Service were found to incorporate the aforementioned service themes and placed the UWI Mona library as either the first to introduce the service in Jamaica or as the only library in Jamaica with the particular service offering, consequently distinguishing the UWI Mona Library from other academic libraries in Jamaica.

This paper is of value, as it provides the library and information community with an outline of services that distinguish a library; it offers library managers in Jamaica and the rest of the world the opportunity to compare services in their libraries with that of other libraries as outlined within the literature review as well as within the UWI Mona library; it highlights how the UWI Mona library, an academic library in the Caribbean, compares on the international library scene, with particular reference to the USA; it informs current and potential library users of how the UWI Mona library is trending in service culture and a focus on distinctive services can promote a community of academic library service best practice.

This article conceptualizes essential keys to the future of peer reference in academic libraries as extrapolated through the dual lenses of academic library history in the United States of America and recent experiences of a peer program with prospective and actual out-of-the-building experiences.

A 30,000-foot historical view of the dispositions of space in academic library buildings, collections, spaces, technology and reference provision is integrated with a description of the responses and insights of a peer reference program during the program's prospective and actual out-of-the-building experiences. These components are then analyzed to extrapolate keys to peer reference provision in any learning environment.

Peer reference is a natural extension of the Learning Commons model as developed in many academic libraries. To find optimal success in leveraging the benefits of peer-to-peer learning, program coordinators should keep in mind the social aspects of peer learning and intentionally articulate a framework for service delivery that best matches the modalities of providers, patrons and the information environment. In reviewing training and service practices, coordinators should be particularly on guard for any bias due to traditional reliance on the affordances of a library building and/or physical service point.

This article founds its conclusions in regard to the future of peer reference by contextualizing the evolution and future of such programs in the wider historical context of academic library dispositions of space in support of learning. It proposes a conceptual framework for intentionally matching the modalities of providers, patrons and the information environment.

The purpose of this paper is to share a compelling example of a library’s willingness to develop and design itself as an open-ended process.

The case study provides a historical review of the library’s founding design, and an overview of the process and approach to redesign. The study contextualizes the library within current academic library research and literature.

This paper explores the research, engagement and planning process behind the library’s exploration of new models and service configurations. The project was an engaged, inclusive, transparent, library-led process. The commons reestablishes the library as the “nerve center” of the campus.

The paper offers an update to a 1969 report, and later book by Robert Taylor on the Harold F. Johnson Library at Hampshire College, designed as a prototype of an academic library. This paper will be of value to academic librarians, administrators, and historians.

Academic libraries have long been central to the campus ecosystem. From one-room collections housed in multi-functional buildings of the colonial college campus to the modern-day cathedrals where collections, patrons, and technologies collide, academic libraries have been a steadfast, yet flexible pillar of the higher education system. Employing a case study approach, this chapter reveals how one institution, the Ohio University Libraries (OUL), has reimagined the use of library space in response to twenty-first-century demands.

A visioning process undertaken by OUL culminated in a master plan intended to serve as a guide to space utilization and renovation strategies for nearly every floor of the seven-story facility. Beyond the master planning process, external demand for space within the library emerged organically. Given these two realities, OUL’s actions over the last decade have been guided by two main approaches to the use and redesign of space: (1) repurposing space for library-oriented initiatives and (2) co-locating complementary student support services within the library. Collectively, the examples highlighted in this chapter reveal how OUL has redesigned library space and continues to be an innovative environment in response to changing demands.

Profiles, in the first of a series, more recently established Open Archives Initiative (OAI) data providers whose content is not only “harvestable” by OAI service providers, and which offer open access to institutional and discipline information resources in a wide variety of publication and media formats. Looks at the Digital Library of the Commons; E‐LIS: E‐prints in Library and Information Science; INFOMINE; and the Open Video Project.

To present the “Info Hub” at the University of Kentucky Library in Lexington.

Introduces the University of Kentucky's Information Commons.

“Information Commons” is an apt phrase that describes a more contemporary approach to how college and university students perceive library‐reading rooms and needs for technology support.

Provides insights into the introduction of the project.