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This study aims to examine the instruction of basic information literacy (IL) skills taught to the socio‐economically disadvantaged students in the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) at Rider University in summer 2011. The study set out to determine how the beginning IL levels of EOP freshmen differ from those of other freshmen, their learning outcomes, and retention of IL as a means to improve future research instruction.

Faculty of a speech communication class and two librarians collaborated in integrating IL in the class assignments of the 2011 summer EOP program. The assessment tools include identical pre‐ and post‐tests, a second post‐test with different multiple correct answer questions, a survey about students' perceptions of their IL training, and the teaching faculty's observations of EOP students' research skills.

EOP freshmen are equivalent to the peer freshmen in their low levels of IL skills. The findings suggested that EOP freshmen complete IL instruction with stronger IL skills. The second post‐test revealed that many students were confused about some basic IL concepts. Faculty's observation of students' information literacy skills concurs with the pre‐ and post‐tests.

This study fills a void in the literature on recent research of information literacy skills of socio‐economically disadvantaged college students. The multi‐correct answer questions employed are valuable but rarely employed in studies or discussed in the literature. The collaboration of faculty and librarians in assignment design is valuable as an increasing number of faculty are utilizing librarians to teach the necessary IL skills needed in today's curricula.

This paper aims to report on a study of an academic library's wireless laptop lending service. The authors believed that the unexpectedly low usage level of the Monmouth University Library's Laptop Lending Service (LLS) could best be understood by engaging the intended users of the LLS, that is, the students of Monmouth University, a small university in New Jersey. A formal, systematic survey would provide substantive data that would help the Library to evaluate this service and determine how well it meets the needs and expectations of students and answer the question, “Is it sufficient to provide wireless access?”

The open source application PHP Surveyor was used to construct two web‐based surveys which were conducted two years apart (2005 and 2007). An invitation to participate in the survey was emailed to all registered students. Follow‐up emails attended both surveys.

Among other things, it was learned that the fact that a large majority of the students believe that an LLS is a valuable service may not, in itself, assure a high level of usage. But also, a high level of personal laptop ownership among students does not necessarily lead to low demand for the service.

The useful information and ideas that we gained from these surveys could benefit libraries that are planning to implement laptop services, or wish to assess their existing services.

Few research studies on library laptop services have focused on the students' perspective. This study does that, but also, uniquely, made it possible to juxtapose results from various similar studies of students and a survey of academic librarians.

The purpose of this paper it to determine the effectiveness of “single‐session” information literacy instruction as it was integrated into the curriculum of a general education course at Monmouth University, New Jersey.

Two types of assessment instrument were used: a pre‐ and post‐test to measure any changes in learning outcomes of information literacy (IL) concepts after an IL instruction (ILI) session, and a student survey conducted after the post‐test. Installed on the course management system, these assessments were administered by teaching faculty over three semesters.

Single‐session ILI had a positive if not dramatic impact on learning outcomes. The pre‐ and post‐test instrument was able to show specific strengths and weaknesses in the students' comprehension of IL concepts. And the survey revealed that most students believed that their ILI was valuable.

The paper did not employ a control group – a common practice in similar studies – although doing so could result in richer data and would conform the paper to general practices.

The results of this assessment study concur with other research that supports the position that single‐session ILI has a measurably significant positive effect on student learning outcomes.

This paper seeks to learn, by way of a survey, what librarians at US colleges and universities were doing and the issues they were encountering as they considered, developed, or maintained wireless laptop computer lending programs (WLLP).

PHPSurveyor was used to construct a web‐based survey of librarians subscribed to any of 19 library‐related listservs. An invitation to participate in the survey was posted to each listserv on the same day.

Student usage of WLLPs ranged from extremely heavy to very light. Difficulties with library WLLPs were variously characterized as minor to stifling. Nevertheless, patterns emerged in the statistics as well as the additional comments given by many librarians. For example, librarians are much more ambivalent than the “experts” on the supposed cost savings generated by “going wireless”.

The results of this survey are useful to libraries planning their own WLLPs, providing insights into what to expect and what to account for, including (and beyond) equipment costs.

By comparing what was found by the two most relevant earlier studies with these new findings, this study provides a more current picture of WLLPs in academic libraries.

This editorial aims to discuss how technology has transformed the cultural map for libraries so that experiences in Taiwan, Iran, India, Greece, or New Zealand are relevant anywhere in the developed world.

The methodology draws heavily on cultural anthropology in looking at the cultural context and its changes over time.

Four sets of shared problems emerge in these articles: technology applications to solve specific library problems, user studies, cataloging issues, and electronic publishing. These are topics that librarians discuss around the world.

It is a commonplace today that technology has tended to equalize widely separated parts of the world. This is obviously true in terms of consumer goods, but appears to be less well accepted in terms of scholarly endeavor. The international and intellectual breadth of this issue can be seen as something to celebrate.

In this chapter, Mousumi De presents the principles and implications of CRT in the context of Asian and Asian American experiences including the perspective, features, strategies, and new directions on how to facilitate the preparation of teacher candidates and work with all teachers to understand the complexity of the Asian and Asian American identity, their racialized experiences, and their sociohistorical, transnational contexts that continue to influence their lived experiences. This chapter highlights the important issues and challenges facing Asians and Asian Americans that have been camouflaged by their stereotypical treatment as model minorities. It also shares the work of many scholars on approaches for promoting diversity and inclusion, such as implementing anti-racist, anti-oppressive, and inclusive history curricula, cultural citizenship education, teaching for social justice, and culturally responsive and culturally sustaining teaching for addressing the marginalization of Asians and Asian Americans.

The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between coaching leadership and employees' taking charge while incorporating the mediating role of work meaningfulness and the moderating role of challenge-hindrance stressor.

A total of 355 pairs of effective samples were collected through a two-stage supervisor-subordinate paired survey. Four hypotheses were tested using hierarchal regression analysis and bootstrapping method.

The findings show that coaching leadership is positively related to taking charge, and work meaningfulness positively mediates the coaching leadership-taking charge relationship; high challenge stressors and high hindrance stressors weaken the positive effect of coaching leadership on work meaningfulness respectively; challenge stressors and hindrance stressors further moderate the indirect relationship of coaching leadership and taking charge through work meaningfulness.

This study provides a new perspective for organizations to activate employees' taking charge, thereby enriching the antecedents of taking charge. By incorporating challenge-hindrance stressor framework, this study also provides answers to when coaching leadership will be less effective.

This chapter offers a comprehensive review the literature on authentic leadership (AL). The authors employ a bibliometric approach to identify, classify, visualise and synthesise relevant scholarly publications and the work of a core group of interdisciplinary scholars who are key contributors to the research on AL. They review 264 journal articles, adopting a clustering technique to assess the central themes of AL scholarship. They identify five distinct thematic clusters: authenticity in the context of leadership; structure of AL; social perspectives on AL; dynamism of AL; and value perceptions of AL. Velt and Sinkovics assert that these clusters will help scholars of AL to understand the dominant streams in the literature and provide a foundation for future research.