Knowledge Maps and the Work of Academic Librarians in an Interdisciplinary Environment

This article describes a method that academic librarians can use to help established scholars and doctoral students become more cognizant of interdisciplinary approaches to their academic fields and areas. This method centers around the creation of knowledge maps: visually oriented aids tracing intellectual connections and linkages between and among various fields and areas that allow students and professors to get a good sense of emerging trends in a given academic specialty. Many professors want librarians to be proactive when it comes to suggesting new perspectives and new ways of seeing their research questions. Knowledge maps can be used by librarians as information-literacy tools in the facilitation of interdisciplinary knowledge among academic researchers. In addition, the creation of knowledge maps by librarians can be seen as a component of the changing nature of reference librarianship—a job that is becoming more intellectualized through one-on-one consultations between students, professors, and librarians.     

Skunks in the Library: A Path to Production for Scholarly R&D

ABSTRACT

Library-based digital humanities “skunkworks” are semi-independent research-and-development labs staffed with librarians who act as scholar-practitioners. Their creation is an uncommon, yet uncommonly potent, organizational response to opportunities opened up by digital scholarship. This article describes the Scholars’ Lab at the University of Virginia Library and asserts a critical role for library-embedded digital centers in forging new paths for knowledge work in the humanities.     

Library Collections for the Support of Academic Sport Management Programs

Sport management is a relatively new and rapidly growing academic discipline. Despite the proliferation of sport management programs in the United States, a review of the library literature reveals few publications concerning library support for such programs. In addition to providing background knowledge about the sport management discipline, this article provides practical information for academic librarians by recommending essential databases, journals, academic publishers, industry publishers, and associations in the arena of sport management.     

Are MLS Graduates Being Prepared for the Changing and Emerging Roles that Librarians Must Now Assume Within Research Libraries?

ABSTRACT

The focus of research libraries is changing to include digital resources, improving the information literacy level of patrons, and creating new partnerships on and off campus, among other things. This creates a need to recruit librarians trained in these areas and open to these changes. Library science training is a necessary foundation for preparing graduates to qualify for and excel in changing and emerging new roles. This article explores current recruitment efforts to articulate new roles and to successfully hire graduates with the skills and aptitude to fill them.     

Academic Library Collaboration in Supporting Students Pre-Induction: The Head Start Project

For higher education institutions in the United Kingdom there is a growing focus on improving student retention, encouraging academic engagement, and easing transition into university life. This article reports on the creation and outcomes of Head Start, a pre-induction online course created to provide students with a level of understanding of academic literacies including information literacy to aid preparation for university study. Information literacy librarians have reported that there has been a marked improvement in the confidence and information literacies of new starters taking the module. The article is of value for others wishing to support students at pre-entry.     

Metadata Practices in Academic and Non-Academic Libraries for Digital Projects: A Survey

This article presents the results of a survey examining and comparing the metadata practices of academic and non-academic libraries regarding digital projects. It explores the types of metadata and vocabularies utilized, issues of interoperability, end-user-created metadata, and staffing for metadata planning and creation. Participants from 87 academic libraries and 40 non-academic libraries responded to the survey. The survey found that, despite their different environments, academic and non-academic libraries engage in similar metadata practices. The majority of the participating libraries have metadata librarians, who are the primary staff members responsible for all metadata activities. Academic libraries tend to use more metadata schemes, plan for metadata interoperability more frequently, and are more likely to have created new positions responsible for metadata for digital projects.     

A Review of: “Going Beyond Google: The Invisible Web in Learning and Teaching. Devine,Jane and Egger-Sider,Francine.”

As technology rapidly changes, libraries remain go-to points for education and technology skill development. In academic health sciences libraries, trends suggest librarians provide more training on technology topics than ever before. While education and training have always been roles for librarians, providing technology training on new mobile devices and emerging systems requires class creation and training capabilities that are new to many librarians. To appeal to their users, many health sciences librarians are interested in developing technology-based classes. This column explores the question: what skills are necessary for developing and teaching technology in an academic health sciences library setting?     

Citation Help in Databases: The More Things Change,the More They Stay the Same

In 2005, the authors reviewed citation help in databases and found an error rate of 4.4 errors per citation. This article describes a follow-up study that revealed a modest improvement in the error rate to 3.4 errors per citation, still unacceptably high. The most problematic area was retrieval statements. The authors conclude that librarians should include citation features in the evaluation of databases and should open a dialogue with vendors about the importance of providing accurate, reliable information about citations to students.     

The Availability of Faculty Publication Databases from Library Web Pages

Abstract

Faculty publication databases or author bibliographies offer libraries an opportunity to provide services to users. Initially, these databases remained initiatives of special libraries in the health-sciences fields. Librarians used the publication information derived from these databases to compile lists for annual reports. However, the advent of new technologies, especially the Web, prompted numerous libraries to develop faculty publication databases for their institutions. The author conducted a survey of various listservs to discover the history and development of these databases. The results illustrate the popularity of Web-based faculty publication databases. The motivation for their creation varied, but most respondents emphasized the desire to highlight the research activities of their institutions. In addition, the content of materials included in the databases and the definition of faculty also varied, depending on the type of library. Librarians reported a wide range of software employed in the development of these databases highlighting their creation by librarians with various levels of programming skills. Moreover, additional features included in these projects underscore the potential for librarians to provide added value from this service. Finally, while institutional repositories seemingly present similar content, publication databases differ in their focus on a citation format that offers a solution to items without copyright permission for full-text accessibility.     

关于影响图书馆数据库利用因素的分析与建议

影响高校和公共图书馆数据库利用的因素主要包括两个方面：一是数据库产品具有的内容、界面、存取和全文等；二是图书馆职员的影响，主要包括推荐、指导训练和担当助手。通过认识和分析这些影响因素，作者从馆藏发展决策、人才配备、资金利用及指导培训这几个大方面提出建议。     

知识管理：图书馆的作用

近年来，知识管理的发展引起了图书馆员和图书馆的高度关注。本文将回顾知识管理的发展过程，并比较信息与知识、信息管理与知识管理之间的区别。本文还将探究图书馆员／图书馆在知识管理中的作用，提高在数字和知识时代，图书馆员／图书馆应当在其各自的组织中承担起知识管理的职责，以开发智力财富，促进知识创新。     

The Public Knowledge Project and the Simon Fraser University Library: A Partnership in Open Source and Open Access

The Public Knowledge Project is an ongoing collaboration between academics, librarians, publishers, editors, and software developers, working together to build alternatives in scholarly publishing. The project has developed a suite of open source software that significantly reduces the time and expense required for producing academic journals and conferences, and facilitates making research results freely available through open access. This article examines the history of the project, provides an overview of its open source software, discusses the growing community participating in the project, and considers its future directions.     

Demonstrating Value in Federal Medical Center Libraries

Abstract

Librarians in the federal sector, like librarians in other medical center libraries, increasingly find it necessary to prove their worth to administrators of their facilities in order to keep their libraries open. The Federal Libraries Section of the Medical Library Association developed a survey for use by federal librarians to help them quantify the value of library reference services provided. Using this survey, these librarians gathered statistics to show the library’s effect on patient care, education, and administrative questions.     

专业图书馆的服务创新

根据专业图书馆的性质和特点,阐述建设独具特色的专题数据库和建立专业门户网站及专业资源导航库的必要性;介绍网络环境下改善服务内容和方式,开展个性化服务的具体内容;并指出提高信息服务人员素质,使其努力成为知识导航员的重要性。     

Changing the Tire Instead of Reinventing the Wheel: Customizing an Existing Online Information Literacy Tutorial

ABSTRACT

Information literacy instruction has become a core responsibility of many academic librarian positions in recent years. Online information literacy tutorials have gained increasing popularity among librarians struggling to keep up with the growing demand for this type of instruction. The availability of high-quality, open source tutorials has prompted some librarians to customize existing tutorials rather than build their own resource from scratch. This article provides an overview and checklist for librarians who are considering customization of an existing online tutorial as a means of meeting student information literacy needs.     

Bibilometrics Services and the Academic Library: Meeting the Emerging Needs of the Campus Community

The increasing importance of research assessment is but one factor within the ever-changing scholarly communication landscape that is challenging libraries to develop new services to serve the needs of their academic communities. Institutional budget allocations, grant funding, and faculty tenure and promotion increasingly depend on performance indicators, including bibliometrics such as citation counts, impact factors, the h-index, and other quantitative measurements of research output. With their longstanding expertise in collecting, categorizing, and analyzing data, not to mention their familiarity with scholarly databases and indexes tracking cited references, librarians are well qualified to meet the emerging demand for bibliometrics services.     

Connecting to the Electronic Library:

The technology of the electronic library, because of its reliance on remotely accessed databases, has created an environment where the user can autonomously control information flow and content. This environment forces reference librarians to redefine their relationship with the user community, shifting their role from a mediator of preestablished information sources to a partner in the creation of individual databases. This shift in paradigm requires that reference librarian training shift its focus from a source-orientation to a process-orientation.     

A Profession Without Limits: The Changing Role of Reference Librarians

ABSTRACT

Reference librarians, specifically those working in academic health sciences environments, have expanded their roles and taken on new and unique responsibilities. While librarians at The George Washington University’s Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library continue to provide traditional reference services, they have gone beyond their comfort zone in many cases to become involved in activities that are outside of the librarian’s established role. This article describes the current roles of Himmelfarb’s reference librarians, as well as the way these librarians prepared for these roles and addressed the associated challenges.     

Evaluating Continuing Resources: Perspectives and Methods from Science Librarians

Five science librarians share their experiences with the evaluation of continuing resources at an academic university and discuss implications caused by the evaluation process. Four of the authors were new to collection evaluations at the time of the Serial Evaluation Project. These new librarians faced many challenges, both personally and professionally, in dealing with the cancellation process. Although the differences in approaches to collection analysis are discussed somewhat, they are not a focus of the article.     

Re-engaging/Engaging Part-time Librarians

In order to maintain high quality service and strengthen retention of part-time librarians, this article addresses ways of engaging new part-time librarians and re-engaging long-time part-time librarians. Part-time librarians are hired primarily to work hours outside the traditional work week or as temporary replacements for unanticipated vacancies, yet they end up providing a third of the service, solely, during evenings and weekends in most small to mid-sized academic institutions. Most are brought in with very little training or orientation to the institution and are expected to hit the ground running while maintaining quality service. This article provides managers with suggestions to better integrate part-time librarians into the fabric of the institution.