Search results

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the practice of information literacy by showing the role that extensive collaboration plays in a graduate off‐campus cohort program.

A case study of an innovative project that uses a collaborative approach to information literacy embedded into an off‐campus graduate cohort program offered in the field of graduate education.

In this paper, it is not stated or implied that the traditional library or librarian will be irrelevant to higher education in the twenty‐first century. Nor, however, is it suggested that the collaboration between (for example) librarian and graduate education programs that is necessary to stave off such obsolescence takes place inevitably. It is known that the literature and classroom observations to date clearly demonstrate that existing collaborative efforts between these two entities have been successful in benefiting graduate students. However, this model needs to become more pervasive in practice to take the profession effectively into the twenty‐first century.

This project was limited to one graduate program in the College of Education. However, it does have implications for other graduate programs as well as for undergraduate programs.

The results of this collaborative project indicate techniques and practices by means of which students will improve both information literacy and critical analysis skills.

This paper supports the idea that collaboration between librarians and graduate faculty members is an essential factor in enhancing an information literacy program at the university level.

Investment in graduate education is costly in various ways so completion success is a big concern for universities and stakeholders. Largely the graduate educational landscape moves along a commonly structured path from acceptance to graduation. Despite many having successfully attained the award, the research literacies that signal doctoral achievement remain obscure and scholars continue to struggle with developing clear and tangible measures for the competencies that represent attainment of the degree. Feedback gathered from faculty at a large research institution through a series of semi-structured interviews illustrated the challenge departments have to effectively communicate what it takes to get through graduate education. As a result students still have a difficult time understanding the complexity of graduate training. This study views graduate education from the lens of intellectual journeys, as opposed to the research lifecycle, as a way of uncovering distinct disciplinary discourse practices and offering libraries critical points to align services using this framework.

The methodology is highly flexible and adaptable to many contexts besides graduate education. This study takes a different approach from previous studies in its framing of discussions with academic faculty, using journey maps, to focus on the intellectual journeys of graduate students. Faculty from different disciplines participated in one-on-one, hour-long interviews. Discussions were audio recorded, transcribed, and then coded into NVivo. Iterative review on the data continued until themes emerged. The data gathered were used to compile a detailed map of the processes and requirements that make up graduate education. This approach to the data helped to identify what faculty perceive as the greatest struggles for graduate students and provide evidence of the key places within the intellectual journeys of graduate students.

This paper provides a discussion of graduate student personas revealed through intellectual journeys, assesses the issues students encounter, shares critical time points and key places within these intellectual journeys where significant development occur, and suggests how libraries can and should connect with graduate committee members to establish missing support structures. Practical suggestions for library support are given for the areas where students struggle most. These critical services can be aligned to key developmental phases that will not only positively impact the time to completion but also retention.

First, the methodology discussed is highly flexible and adaptable to many contexts besides graduate education. Second, librarians adopting this methodology can generate their own editable journey maps not only to offer the most critical services but these tools also double as visual communication and negotiation tools for graduate students and their mentors during graduate training. Third, previous research has suggested that the most instrumental factor for graduate students completing their degree was the concept of forward progress. Framing the graduate experience and orienting library graduate support through the lens of disciplinary intellectual journeys achieves an action-oriented approach that supplements and addresses structural inequities by providing consequential support at meaningful points in a student’s journey thus allowing students to make forward progress and ultimately lead to faster completion rates.

Shibboleth will examine the state of MLS (master of library science) education in the United States of America from the point of view of a recent MLS graduate. It will break out three particular problems with the MLS and propose solutions based on reviews of the literature and original analysis.

The author conducts a brief review of the literature on librarian education and provides analysis based on these readings and original research.

The author finds the state of the MLS education to be wanting in its preparation of graduates who are expected to be leaders of change in the library and information science profession.

The debate over librarian education has been framed almost exclusively by LIS educators and the professional leadership. Shibboleth presents a new voice, that of the recent MLS graduate, into the dialogue. The MLS education has not yet been thoroughly examined from the point of view of its most recent recipients. The author seeks to fill this void and encourage more of her peers to engage their colleagues in shaping the future of the curriculum.

Purpose – This chapter explains how the library profession is well-suited to developing and delivering library services that target the growing opportunity gap in the United States and identifies barriers to advancing this professional objective more widely in public libraries. The chapter identifies leadership and organizational development, enhanced graduate training and continuing education, and the need to overcome excessive modesty and passivity as fundamental to advancing this role.

Approach – This chapter documents declining opportunity in the United States. It summarizes the history of librarians’ professional accomplishments and services, and recent public library projects that illustrate the aptitude, expertise, values, and culture necessary to address declining opportunity. Reviewing pertinent literature and the authors’ observations, this chapter identifies barriers librarians face in rising to this challenge and offers solutions.

Findings – Factors limiting public librarians’ ability to address declining opportunity include too few leaders with a vision for librarianship rising to pivotal challenges, such as declining opportunity, and the management skills or training necessary to develop librarians’ potential to target such objectives; professional modesty and passivity rooted in gender bias; absence of graduate training and continuing education in quantitative and qualitative analyses as applied to decision-making, basic evaluation, and advocacy; and inadequate understanding of research and its application to services that target declining opportunity.

Originality/Value – The chapter elucidates the underdeveloped capacity of professional librarians to apply their aptitude, expertise, and professional values to one of the greatest challenges of our era – the decline of opportunity in the United States – and outlines steps that will support that goal.

The purpose of this paper is to address dimensions of crisis as applied to the profession of librarianship from a public administration frame of reference. For librarians to retain professional status, the human element of librarianship must be promoted through an emphasis on their educational mission, inspired by public administration's professional code of ethics. Within this process, librarians must promote themselves as educators, embracing the concept of information literacy as their field of jurisdiction.

Reflecting an interdisciplinary approach, literature from public administration and library science is used to support these points.

A robust professional education and affiliation with professional associations reinforces the informational asymmetries of professionals through specialized instruction and knowledge sharing, which will lead to not only a strengthened profession, but also to opportunities for leadership.

To reinforce professionalism, the human element of librarianship must be promoted through an enhanced emphasis on the educational mission of librarians within the ethical framework of the profession. The place for this to occur is within schools of graduate education and professional associations.

This discussion addresses dimensions of crisis as applied to the profession of librarianship from a public administration frame of reference. The rationale for this approach is that library and information science can benefit from elements of the public administration school of thought regarding professionalism, in general, and ethical codes, in particular.

It may seem faintly ridiculous to speak of the history of a teaching institution that has yet to receive its first students, but over the last forty years the idea of a second Postgraduate School of Librarianship has been a gleam in many a professional eye—a gleam that at times flickered and almost died, but which revived and glowed brightly with the suggestion in 1960 that the University of Sheffield should be asked if it would consider establishing such a school.

The Need for Reference Desk Orientation. The literature on training in libraries is concerned for the most part with educating paraprofessionals to perform professional tasks, training student workers to perform basic functions, and updating librarians' skills with the advent of new technologies. Very little has been published on the process of initiating newly hired or reassigned librarians into the rigors of formal reference desk service. The need for training geared specifically to reference desk work has been documented. Evidently such training must be taking place. But the specific details of what comprises such training apparently remain as in‐house publications.

During the last ten years, the number of research‐level serials has grown rapidly, and serials costs have increased at an even faster rate. These events, coupled with other inflationary pressures and nearly static or declining budgets, forced academic research libraries to shift collections‐funding patterns significantly. As a result, they repeatedly reduced their support of monograph‐rich collections in order to pay for a series of unexpectedly large cost increases in serial‐rich collections. Despite such stopgap fund transfers, serials costs often outstripped their increased allotments. Cancellation of serial acquisitions, serials ordering moratoria, buy‐one‐cancel‐one policies, and other assorted roadblocks or holding actions frequently resulted in a qualitative decline in serial‐rich collections, yet seldom prevented the publication of new serials or the continued increases in prices. Acknowledging the notoriety of this problem among research librarians, I call it “the serials problem.”

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 provide a selected bibliography of recent resources on library instruction and information literacy.

Introduces and annotates periodical articles, monographs, and audiovisual material examining library instruction and information literacy.

Provides information about each source, discusses the characteristics of current scholarship, and describes sources that contain unique scholarly contributions and quality reproductions.

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