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The purpose of this article is to explore and expose some of the many facets of Google Scholar™ that have set the academic library world on edge. Google Scholar™'s impact on reference and information literacy is considered, as are the challenges it poses for the library's web site.

Includes opinions in a point/counterpoint format, as well as citations to recently published literature.

Provides arguments about ignoring or leveraging the teachings of Scholar Google™ in conjunction with teaching the library's various subscription databases available through the library's web site.

This paper fills an identified information need by offering original, practical advice to librarians.

This study aims to discuss a system constructed to satisfy scholars' personal information management requirements when collecting e‐documents, and to include generation of a citation format that can aid paper writing. The system compiles records and personal publications of specific domains collected by individual scholars to form a knowledge set for other scholars to use as a reference. It not only simplifies the data collection process, but also increases the visibility of scholars themselves, along with their papers.

This study analyzes the mechanism of increasing cited frequency of scholars' publications and aggregating relevant documents. It then enables the design of feasible system structures based on this mechanism to form a knowledge set by combining scholars' publications within specific academic domains. In addition, it expedites the gathering of relevant documents by scholars in order to create an accessible archive for subsequent researchers.

By way of an effective system for publication sharing, and not merely offering a reference for scholars in other relevant fields, this system can also improve the visibility of scholars' publications and further enhance the cited frequency of publications.

Combining collected documents and personal publications and sharing those with other scholars for reference can establish a highly effective personal research domain. It not only simplifies the data collection process, but also increases the visibility of personal academic works.

This study aims to focus on how librarians use and promote Google Scholar (GS) within their library instruction sessions. This study also examines how Google Scholar and the Google Scholar discovery layer, library links, is promoted on library websites. This information is then analyzed across the three date ranges.

This study provides a longitudinal analysis of the opinions and uses of Google Scholar by the Ohio consortium of libraries, OhioLINK. This study uses survey data that was collected in 2007, 2014 and 2019 via the OhioLINK Listserv and builds off of co-author’s previous study (2008), which examined the attitudes of OhioLINK librarians as it related to Google Scholar.

The results of this research suggested that there were significant changes in use and opinions of Google Scholar between 2007 and 2014 with more normalization of uses and opinions occurring between 2014 and 2019.

Respondents were not asked for the type of library where they work or to identify their position within their libraries, which necessarily limits the conclusions that can be drawn from the survey responses. In retrospect, limiting the sample to instruction librarians or faculty librarians might have yielded more meaningful results. Additionally, this project did not evaluate the uses and opinions of librarians using GS at the reference desk. By providing this information, it would be easier to truly glean the uses and opinions of librarians with regard to GS.

This research will assist librarians contextualize how one of the most popular research resources has been used and promoted by those within the field and how those opinions have changed over time. This study will provide context into how Google Scholar became one of the most popular research tools and how attitudes of this unprecedented, and controversial, resource came to be accepted by librarians over the past 15 years.

This study will help librarians better contextualize how other librarians use and promote Google Scholar. Furthermore, it demonstrates how a controversial information research tool became accepted by those in the field over time.

According to the authors’ knowledge, this research is the only study to provide a longitudinal analysis of the librarian opinions of Google Scholar. It targeted the same audience in identical surveys in a way no other Google Scholar research has done. It builds off of the co-author’s (2008) work, which is a well-cited study regarding librarian attitudes of Google Scholar. This research was done on the 15th year anniversary of Google Scholar.

With the growth in popularity of academic social networking sites, evaluating the quality of the academic information they contain has become increasingly important. Users' evaluations of this are based on predefined criteria, with external factors affecting how important these are seen to be. As few studies on these influences exist, this research explores the factors affecting the importance of criteria used for judging high-quality answers on academic social Q&A sites.

Scholars who had recommended answers on ResearchGate Q&A were asked to complete a questionnaire survey to rate the importance of various criteria for evaluating the quality of these answers. Statistical analysis methods were used to analyze the data from 215 questionnaires to establish the influence of scholars' demographic characteristics, the question types, the discipline and the combination of these factors on the importance of each evaluation criterion.

Particular disciplines and academic positions had a significant impact on the importance ratings of the criteria of relevance, completeness and credibility. Also, some combinations of factors had a significant impact: for example, older scholars tended to view verifiability as more important to the quality of answers to information-seeking questions than to discussion-seeking questions within the LIS and Art disciplines.

This research can help academic social Q&A platforms recommend high-quality answers based on different influencing factors, in order to meet the needs of scholars more effectively.

According to Gardner (1990), leadership is defined as “the process of persuasion or examples by which an individual (or leadership team) induces a group to pursue objectives held by the leader or shared by the leader and his or her followers” (p. 1). Though this definition of leadership is popular, this analysis is laced with assumptions. It fails to acknowledge the intentional and often covert hierarchical nature of leadership, which negatively affects marginalized groups, that is, the “so-called” followers. The assumption in traditional notions is that everyone is striving toward the same goals and all receive the same benefits. Under this model, no individual is forced or compelled to acknowledge his/her own privilege, biases, or recognize the potential role each person has in perpetuating oppression. By demystifying these assumptions, the authors provide alternative ways to think about leadership.

This research paper explores the roles of electronic texts in research projects in the humanities and seeks to deepen the understanding of the nature of scholars' engagement with e-texts. The study used qualitative methodology to explore engagement of scholars in literary and historical studies with primary materials in electronic form (i.e., e-texts). The study revealed a range of scholars' interactions with e-texts during the whole research process. It uncovered a particular pattern of information-seeking practices in electronic environments called netchaining and the main types of uses and contributions of e-texts to research projects. It was found that e-texts play support and substantive roles in the research process. A number of influences from electronic environment are identified as challenges and aids in working with e-texts. The study does not have statistical significance. It indicates a need for further research into scholarly practices, training requirements, and new forms of service provision. Study results are relevant for the development of digital collections, information services, educational programs, and other forms of support for the use of technology in research. The results can be also used to inform approaches to text encoding and development of electronic information systems and have implications for organizational and industry policies. The study found a range of scholars' interactions and forms of intellectual engagement with e-texts that were not documented and analyzed by earlier studies. It provides insights into disciplinary variations in the humanities and contributes to the understanding of scholarly change catalyzed by information technology.

Within the developing exploration of the role of the scholar-practitioner, the situation in which scholar-practitioners engage in the scholarship of practice in their own organizational systems has not received much attention. This chapter adopts the position that scholar-practitioners are not merely practitioners who do research but rather that they integrate scholarship in their practice and generate actionable knowledge, that is, knowledge that is robust for scholars and actionable for practitioners. This chapter explores the phenomenon of scholar-practitioners engaging in the scholarship of practice in their own organizational systems as inside change agents. It discusses how scholar-practitioners engage in inquiry-in-action in first-, second-, and third-person modes of inquiry and practice in the present tense and provides a methodology and methods for such engagement that it be rigorous, reflective, and relevant.

Transformative learning experiences can expand individual personal and professional capacity. In this work, the meaning and significance of individual growth is viewed through the lens of public value, focusing on the connection between person and place. This chapter details how Nuffield International Farming Scholars perceive public value contributions stemming from their individual development and subsequent engagement in civic life and community development. Voices of program participants provide insight on capacity building experiences as part of sustainable community development efforts, and how perceived outcomes for individuals such as professional and personal benefits, post-program engagement, and a sense of reciprocity are motivators leading to public value contribution.

Undergraduate information commons have become pervasive in the academic library landscape. In recent years, librarians and administrators have come to identify the need for comparable commons’ spaces and services for graduate students. This chapter serves as a review of recently developed models of graduate commons—in this discussion referred to as Scholars’ Commons—as defined by an integration of physical learning spaces, personnel, and a dynamic availability of research support services that support assist graduate students throughout their academic life cycle. These provisions serve as the foundation for the development of enhanced library-supported graduate student success.

Still a rare commodity, existing models from selected institutional web sites were examined using a framework for analysis consisting of several criteria: new use of space; segmented services; partnerships; and new organizational structures. Through a synthesis of the commonalities prevalent in these systems, this chapter aims to provide recommendations for prospective Scholars’ Commons models and proposals for their development. Library organizations contemplating the development of a Scholars’ Commons need to consider the needs of their target population, potential new or reallocated spaces, feasibility of providing support and research technologies, and possible staffing models. As well, the authors consider the importance of library-based graduate student support that bolsters cross-divisional collaborative partnerships across the academy.

With the rise of alternate discovery services, such as Google Scholar, in conjunction with the increase in open access content, researchers have the option to bypass academic libraries when they search for and retrieve scholarly information. This state of affairs implies that academic libraries exist in competition with these alternate services and with the patrons who use them, and as a result, may be disintermediated from the scholarly information seeking and retrieval process. Drawing from decision and game theory, bounded rationality, information seeking theory, citation theory, and social computing theory, this study investigates how academic librarians are responding as competitors to changing scholarly information seeking and collecting practices. Bibliographic data was collected in 2010 from a systematic random sample of references on CiteULike.org and analyzed with three years of bibliometric data collected from Google Scholar. Findings suggest that although scholars may choose to bypass libraries when they seek scholarly information, academic libraries continue to provide a majority of scholarly documentation needs through open access and institutional repositories. Overall, the results indicate that academic librarians are playing the scholarly communication game competitively.