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To describe how a personal librarian program at a large university developed, has evolved, and continues to function. This paper aims to assist other librarians in developing their own personal librarian programs. It will also assist librarians who are working to connect to students.

To produce this paper, internal documents were reviewed, existing data were investigated, those who assisted in the development of the program were consulted and literature on personal librarian programs was reviewed.

Personal librarian programs can be an efficient way to connect to students and can create awareness about library services, especially without a formal orientation for new students. The personal librarian program discussed here connects the library to a large number of students with little time and effort. Planning is important in developing a working program.

Librarians can use this article to understand how a personal librarians program functions and how it can benefit their libraries. The paper emphasizes revising an existing program to work more effectively and using planning documents and assessment to help an outreach program run smoothly.

This paper details how a personal librarian program was developed and has evolved as well as how the program functions. The value is in the ways in which the program has been revised and has evolved and in the role that planning has taken in creating an effective program.

This paper aims to highlight how librarians at Texas Tech University Libraries are thinking outside the box. Librarians launched services in a number of directions by creating new service points through videos, QR code signs, and roving reference. Personal librarians use videos to introduce themselves, allowing the patron to relate to the librarian on a personal level. Signs with QR codes are posted in areas of the library to assist patrons in locating materials, rooms, or services. Roving reference allows librarians to step out of the library, meeting patrons' needs across campus.

The literature is limited on libraries utilizing videos to promote librarians and roving reference. This paper examines in detail services deployed in the last two years at Texas Tech University Libraries.

The reaction to these services has been mixed. Students responded that videos and roving reference have a personal touch and meet patrons at their point of need. Students have not adopted the QR code technology.

Unfortunately, these new services do not have long‐term statistics to evaluate.

The paper acts as a guide to implementing marketing in academic libraries, QR codes, and reference services off the desk. Other libraries can implement the services described.

The novelty of this research is the creative way the librarians approached the needs of the patrons.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the planning, implementation and assessment of a personal librarian (PL) program for transfer students at a four-year private university. It highlights best practices to ensure the success of such a program, emphasizes the importance of collaboration with other campus units and explores the possible applications for other underserved student populations.

This paper explains why the PL model is particularly appropriate to serve the needs of transfer students. It clearly describes the assessment methods to evaluate such a program and proposes best practices to ensure success and sustainability.

Transfer students respond very positively to a PL program as shown by the number of interactions they have with their PLs and their responses to a survey. Librarians also appreciate the chance to develop meaningful relationships with students despite the addition to their workload.

Institutions looking at ways to reach out to transfer students or other underserved populations can easily adapt the PL program described here.

The PL concept is not new but, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first time it has been applied to transfer students. The program described here is also unique because of its “boutique” approach, which emphasizes customization and personalization.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to find out the perception of university librarians about the current and required competencies and to identify the current rank and to point out the benchmark for competencies of library professionals at public universities in Pakistan.

Quantitative research design is used for the conduct of the current study. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data. The Special Libraries Association instrument “Competencies for Information Professionals of the 21st Century” was used to design the questionnaire. A paired sample t-test is used to establish whether there is any noteworthy distinction between the current and required levels of skills. Inferential statistic was also used and independent sample t-test and ANOVA was used to identify the difference in perception on the basis of different demographic variables.

There is a significant gap between the perceptions of university librarians about their present skills and required skills. The present level of skills is lower than the desired level of competence. There is no significant relationship between the length of job (i.e. experience), grade and skills of academic librarians. But in the case of gender, male have a higher score on the current level of competencies while female have a higher score on the required level of skills.

The findings of this study are helpful for universities in the recruitment, management and training of their librarians on the basis of required skills. Furthermore, it will be useful for librarians in their career planning and continuing education and library schools to revise their curriculum in accordance with needs.

In this article, the fifth in a series on microcomputer software for information storage and retrieval, test results of seven programs are presented and various properties and qualities of these programs are discussed. In this instalment of the series we discuss programs for information storage and retrieval which are primarily characterised by the properties of personal information managers (PIMs), hypertext programs, or best match and ranking retrieval systems. The programs reviewed in this issue are the personal information managers 3by5/RediReference, askSam, Dayflo Tracker, and Ize; Personal Librarian uses best match and ranking; the hypertext programs are Folio Views and the HyperKRS/HyperCard combination (askSam, Ize and Personal Librarian boast hypertext features as well). HyperKRS/HyperCard is only available for the Apple Macintosh. All other programs run under MS‐DOS; versions of Personal Librarian also run under Windows and some other systems. For each of the seven programs about 100 facts and test results are tabulated. The programs are also discussed individually.

Explores the possibility of considering the creation and maintenance of reference librarians’ personal Web sites as part of their professional duties. After reviewing a sample of personal Web sites and the results of an e‐mail survey targeting such sites and their creators, a case study is presented of three home pages detailing interactions with site visitors, especially interactions with research scholars, as well as examining non‐traditional reference service and scholarly publishing. Concludes the article by offering suggestions regarding the integration of personal Web sites into professional reference librarians’ duties and faculty activities.

This paper aims to present recently published resources on information literacy and library instruction through an extensive annotated bibliography of publications covering all library types.

This paper annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2017 in over 200 journals, magazines, books and other sources.

The paper provides a brief description for all 590 sources.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential of readers' advisory (RA) in libraries to help immigrants with psychological and socio-cultural adaptation in a new country.

The data were empirically collected from a sample of Russian-speaking immigrant readers residing in the Greater Toronto Area, Ontario, Canada, by means of background surveys and in-depth interviews.

The RA interaction is not merely a conversation about leisure books; it is a powerful intercultural encounter that has the potential to raise the levels of intimacy and attraction between host and immigrant populations, break negative stereotypes, help to build shared networks and create favorable contacts, change intergroup attitudes, and improve readers' mastery of the second language and knowledge of a new country.

This article makes a contribution to three areas related to RA. It provides insight into the views and perceptions of RA by a selected group of readers; it gives voice to immigrant readers whose experiences with RA are particularly under-represented in the Library and Information Science literature; and it conceptualizes the RA interaction as an intercultural encounter, using the uncertainty reduction based theory of intercultural adaptation to frame the discussion.

Presents a strong argument that the future of reference is part of an evolutionary process and that, by understanding the relationship of reference service to the library and of the library to its community, one can better understand how those relationships will evolve in the future. Notes that the four functions for reference librarians, as defined by Samuel Swett Green in 1876, remain the core of reference service today.

It has been suggested that “space and artifacts constitute systems of communication which organizations build up within themselves” (Gagliardi, 1992a, b, p. vi) and reflect the cultural life within that organization. This is a study of how the “landscape” of a public library (“Library X”), as an information retrieval system, relates to the values of the people who created it. The efforts here are geared towards understanding the physical instantiation of institutional culture and, more specifically, institutional values as they are reflected through the artifact.