The Availability and Effectiveness of Research Supports for Early Career Academic Librarians

For many academic librarians, scholarly research is required in order to attain tenure or promotion and it is widely acknowledged that many early career librarians find this process challenging. Using a survey of >200 untenured or recently tenured academic librarians, this study investigates early career academic librarians' access to and experiences with research support activities designed to develop research skills and confidence. Specific attention is paid to informal mentoring, formal mentoring programs, and writing groups. Responses indicate that early career librarians need supports that target three dimensions of the research experience: research design and methods; work practices and accountability; and emotional elements. Despite this, survey respondents had limited access to formal research supports that offer instruction and guidance in the research process, leaving them to rely heavily on informal mentoring. This study highlights the need for libraries and library organizations to invest their resources in research supports for early career academic librarians, helping them to become more effective and confident researchers.     

Research, publication, and service patterns of Florida academic librarians

In an effort to establish benchmarks for comparison to national trends, a web-based survey explored the research, publication, and service activities of Florida academic librarians. Participants ranked the importance of professional activities to the tenure/promotion process. Findings suggest that perceived tenure and promotion demands do influence research productivity.     

Parenthood,Professorship, and Librarianship: Are They Mutually Exclusive?

A survey of tenure-track and tenured librarians at ARL libraries provides data on the relationship between parenthood and professorship. Results analyze the impact of the promotion and tenure process on child-bearing and child-rearing decisions. Discrepancies are found based on gender, tenure status, and family status.     

Toward a Sustainable Method for Core Journal Lists: A Test Case Using Journals in Social Work

Determining the core journals in a discipline serves an important role for both academic librarians and departmental faculty. In addition to helping librarians build or weed journal collections, especially in difficult budget years, core lists help departments seeking accreditation, committees evaluating a candidate’s scholarship for tenure and promotion, and faculty choosing publications for their research. They also assist faculty guiding student research in the discipline. However, because of the inexorable changes that have occurred, and will continue to occur, in scholarly communication, no such list can be considered immutable. The purpose of this study is to identify a method by which individual librarians and/or libraries can create a list of journals considered important to a discipline, one that accurately reflects the state of scholarly communication in a field as it relates to the currency and quality of journal literature, and that is sustainable over time. More specifically, our purpose is twofold. First, to develop a sustainable method for defining the universe of potential core titles; and, second, to identify the core titles within that universe. As the result of discussions on this issue with a social work faculty member, the authors used social work journals for developing a methodology that may be applied to other disciplines.     

Mickey Mouse and Milton: book publishing in the humanities

We report the results of a survey of tenure and promotion criteria in university departments of literature and language in the US. It is clear that the publication of a scholarly monograph remains a conditio sine qua non for the awarding of tenure. We analyze the language of institutional guidelines and standards: these range from the highly concrete to the intentionally vague.     

Caregivers' perceptions of emergent literacy programming in public libraries in relation to the National Research Councils' guidelines on quality environments for children

A survey conducted at three Florida library systems examines caregivers' perceptions of emergent literacy programming and how these perceptions compare with the National Research Council's features for quality programs for children. The survey results reveal that caregivers' perceptions of emergent literacy programming align with the National Research Council's features. The data demonstrates that caregivers' perceptions are very positive toward emergent literacy programming in terms of learning and the environment. Caregivers' perceptions of the environment answers were mostly strongly agree. These results were more positive than their perceptions of learning, although they strongly agree that these programs prepare children for school, reading, and social interaction. The survey results will inform public libraries as to how to design, market, and deliver emergent literacy programming to caregivers with very young children.     

Current Awareness from the User's Perspective: A Survey of Harvard Legal Academics

Abstract

This survey examines the basic needs of Harvard Law Faculty for information about new books and current journal articles. The purpose of this survey was to examine new media and technology in order to develop better current awareness tools, to better utilize the online catalog as a method of delivering current information to faculty, and to produce a new publication that fills in the gaps left by Current Index to Legal Periodicals and other sources. This survey looks at the production and circulation of photocopied pages of law reviews, recent acquisition lists, document delivery and interdisciplinary current awareness needs.     

高校图书馆阅读推广服务需求属性及提升策略研究

论文采用文献调查法从资源、人员、服务、空间四个维度构建了包含27项指标的高校图书馆阅读推广服务需求指标体系。基于KANO模型,采用问卷调查法对27项需求指标进行属性归类和优先序分析,从彰显阅读推广服务影响力、采取针对性服务策略、优先满足关键需求三个方面提出高校图书馆阅读推广服务提升的策略。     

Students' perceptions of their information literacy skills: the confidence gap between male and female international graduate students

In the 2015 Summer Session I, the information literacy team combined two instruments, the Information Literacy Assessment (ILA) and the Students' Perceptions of Their Information Literacy Skills Questionnaire (SPIL-Q), into one survey and distributed it to the college's international graduate students through a Google Form. It was distributed to 932 international graduate students, and 172 valid respondents completed the survey. The purpose of this research was to compare the confidence gap in information literacy skills between men and women, particularly in international graduate students. Data collected illustrated that female international business students (n = 70) tended to be slightly more confident than their male counterparts (n = 102) regarding their perceived information literacy skills as evidenced by their SPIL-Q average score across all six IL topics, 3.78, vs. male student's average score of 3.58.     

Survey on the Needs for Chemistry Research Data Management and Sharing

This paper aims to reveal the situation of research data in chemistry research process and chemistry researchers' need for data management support from five perspectives, i.e., data generation and collection, data recording and processing, data preservation and backup, data publication and sharing, needs for data management and sharing services. Our survey is based on a questionnaire carried out among 119 subjects, i.e., researchers and graduate students in chemistry of Chinese Academy of Science. The analysis results provide us with a better understanding on the current attitudes and needs of researchers and graduate students about data management and sharing in chemistry. Although this survey was implemented in chemistry, it could provide us with some inspirations for designing a range of library services for other disciplines, particularly in promotion, consulting and training of research data management and sharing, and research data storage.     

The Effect of Economic Recession on Institutional Support for Tenure-Track Librarians in ARL Institutions

The objective of this study was to reveal how the national economic recession has affected the nature and extent of support for tenure track librarians at Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member institutions. The authors surveyed 43 ARL Deans and University Librarians to discover the criteria for achieving tenure and the current institutional support for tenure-related activities. All of the responding libraries reported experiencing at least moderate reductions in their overall budgets, with the majority indicating increased workloads for faculty and reductions to monetary support for professional development. Despite this adversity, the survey indicated that the expectations for achieving tenure for librarians in the areas of research and service have not changed.     

Academic libraries and DEI initiatives: A quantitative study of employee satisfaction

This survey study explored employees' of academic libraries, specifically R1 and R2 Doctoral Universities in the United States, attitudes regarding their overall level of satisfaction with the implementation of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives at their places of work in regard to the promotion of DEI culture at their institutions, the ability to pursue DEI work in their day-to-day work, and the alignment of their personal values with their libraries, universities, and surrounding communities. The findings suggest that while most respondents felt there was acceptable buy-in from library and university employees, library and university leadership must provide meaningful support for DEI, or library employees will become dismayed and experience low morale. Findings also indicate that while the institutional culture within one's library and university may be supportive of DEI work, threats to the promotion and tenure process could be a deterrent. Finally, respondents also reported overall comfortability in incorporating DEI work into their day-to-day lives. While the results are not generalizable to institutions outside of the parameters of the current study, this study sheds some perspective on the LIS community's response to DEI issues.     

Service to the Profession

Abstract

For academic librarians with faculty status, service to the profession often forms part of the requirements for promotion and tenure. Considering the concept of professional service raises questions as to what specific activities qualify; what is their weight, both within the service requirement and also as compared with other requirements, such as research and publication; and how are service activities best documented. Examination of ARL Standards and selected promotion and tenure documents revealed inconsistencies between institutions and great flexibility in interpretation by most.     

Do Southeastern Public Universities Adhere to the ACRL Tenure and Promotion Standards?

Faculty status and tenure are goals for many academic librarians in the Southeast. However, the adoption of tenure differs between institutions. In an effort to discover how much adherence there is to the ACRL Standards for Faculty Status for Academic Librarians, librarians at the University of South Alabama sent a survey to 148 public universities in this region. The results illustrated the significant areas of consensus and where consensus was lacking. The outcome suggested the standards were not fully applied, showed the need for further study, and suggested a reassessment of the ACRL Standards.     

Journal rankings by citation analysis in health sciences librarianship

The purpose of this study was to identify objectively a hierarchical ranking of journals for health sciences librarians with faculty status. Such a guideline can indicate a journal's value for promotion and tenure consideration. Lists of recent research articles (1982-1986) in health sciences librarianship, and articles written by health sciences librarians, were compiled by searching Social SCISEARCH and MEDLINE. The journals publishing those articles are presented. Results show BMLA as the most prominent journal in the field. Therefore, citations from articles in BMLA from 1982 to 1986 were chosen as a sample for citation analysis. Citation analysis was employed to identify the most frequently cited journals. Some characteristics of the citations in BMLA are also discussed. The ranking of journals based on citation frequency, as a result, was identified.     

Health sciences librarians,patient contact,and secondary traumatic stress

Objective:The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of secondary traumatic stress (STS) in health sciences librarians (HSLs) who have direct contact with traumatized individuals and their families.Methods:A twenty-five-item survey and the Secondary Traumatic Stress Scale (STSS) were distributed via email to three Medical Library Association email discussion lists.Results:A total of fifty-five HSLs responded to the survey. Survey results indicate moderate levels of STS and variability of symptoms among participants.Conclusions:Library and employee assistance program managers should be aware of the emotional toll of patient and/or family contact for HSLs.     

Examining the association of job tenure,employment history,and organizational status with employee dissent

The purpose of this study was to assess the relationship between temporal and structural components of organizational life (i.e., job tenure, employment history, and organizational history) and employee dissent. This was accomplished by comparing respondents’ reports about their tendencies to use varying strategies for dissent to their reports about present job tenure, number of full‐time employers, total years work experience, and organizational status. Structural equation models were used to examine the association between temporal measures (job tenure, number of full‐time employers, total years work experience), structural measures (organizational status) and dissent constructs. Findings indicated that articulated dissent use was associated with management status, whereas latent dissent use was associated with nonmanagement status, increases in present job tenure and decreases in number of full‐time employers and total years work experience.     

Disciplinary,Institutional, and Individual Factors Affecting Researchers' Depositing Articles in Institutional Repository: An Empirical Analysis

This research investigates how disciplinary contexts, institutional settings, and individual motivations all affect researchers' depositing their articles into an institutional repository (IR). This study employed the Theory of Planned Behavior as its main theoretical framework and proposed six hypotheses to explain how disciplinary, institutional, and individual factors influence researchers' article depositing behaviors through an IR. This research utilized an online survey as its data collection method, and a total of 221 survey responses from researchers in U.S. academic institutions were collected. The hypothesized relationships were then tested by using multiple regression analysis. This research found that perceived community benefit, perceived institutional support, and perceived career benefit significantly increases researchers' article depositing behaviors through an IR, and the perceived career risk significantly decreases researchers' article depositing behaviors through an IR. This research suggests that community benefit, institutional support, and career issues need to be considered to increase researchers' overall article sharing behaviors through an IR.