An Academic Librarian's Response to the “ITHAKA Faculty Survey 2009: Key Strategic Insights for Libraries,Publishers, and Societies”

The mission of libraries and librarians is to serve the information needs of our patrons. Thus we continually adapt to their changing requirements and interests. However, when we are presented with our future diminished role or total technological answers with which we disagree, we seldom speak out publicly. ITHAKA, a digitizing organization, sees libraries as a budget line and predicts a background role maintaining digital archives for academic librarians based on answers to their recent faculty survey. Interlibrary loan is often placed in this background role even as use of our services grows, defying predictions. We benefit from digitization and electronic communication, but we need to build upon the initial patron point of contact we enjoy to expand into a larger resource sharing role.     

Academic Libraries: “Social” or “Communal?” The Nature and Future of Academic Libraries

The apparent death of academic libraries, as measured by declining circulation of print materials, reduced use of reference services, and falling gate counts, has led to calls for a more “social” approach to academic libraries: installing cafés, expanding group study spaces, and developing “information commons.” This study compares these social models with the traditional academic library, whose spirit is best understood as “communal.” It argues that this communal spirit is unique and greatly valued by academic library users. Efforts to create a more social academic library threaten this communal spirit and may do more harm than good.     

Libraries and Consortia: What Will Libraries Pay For?

This article discusses affordability of member dues in library consortia and what services consortia can provide to increase their value to libraries.     

Gendered Expectations for “Agreeableness” in Response to Requests and Opinions

To address the need for more direct assessment of gendered expectations for communication behaviors, we devised a novel experimental approach that tests whether expectations for “agreeableness” are more salient when evaluating male or female speakers in their affirmative responses to a friend’s request or expression of opinion. Briefly, as lag times are introduced, it appears that females are expected to be more agreeable (or male delay is more tolerated), particularly when alignment with opinion is at stake or when a female is responding to another female. Findings are discussed in the context of Expectation Violations Theory.     

From Paper to Internet: Academic Libraries in Transition

This paper examines the current trends, challenges, and issues facing all libraries, and discusses the strategies that academic libraries, in particular, are taking to transform their services, manage their organizations, and preserve their digital assets. It demonstrates how a network of distributed services, resource sharing, co-investment, and access integration contributes to sustainable library development.     

“Since this is the editorial section I intend to express my opinion”: Inequality and expressivity in letters to the editor

This paper analyzes the argumentative style and the characteristics of writers of newspaper letters to the editor. Writers are more likely to be White, male, older, more politically active, and less likely to be politically moderate than the local population. Inequality in political participation persists in this forum. Gender and sense of local political efficacy influence how letter writers make their points. Letters to the editor mostly display inequalities similar to other forms of political participation.     

COUNTER Release 5: What’s New and What It Means to Libraries

A new release of the COUNTER Code of Practice, Release 5 (R5), was recently published and becomes the standard that publishers and content providers must comply with when they deliver the January 2019 usage data to their customers. This article provides an overview of what’s new in R5, draws some comparisons to the previous code of practice, and discusses the implications for librarians.     

“Ask a Librarian” Pages as Reference Gateways to Academic Libraries

A library's web site is a virtual “front door” to its services and collections. Libraries can use their “Ask a Librarian” pages to promote reference services and to inform patrons about the different options available. Much variation is found in the naming of those pages and the number and type of reference contact options they include. This article reports the results of an examination of the reference assistance pages of libraries that are members of the Association of Research Libraries. In particular, the study attempted to determine whether virtual modes of reference service are being promoted at the expense of traditional options.     

Neil Ducray:ROI让新媒体迎来“主动”时代

广告的可测量性,其内涵要比受众到达率检测丰富。它不但包括"广告真正接触到了谁"、也包含了"这个广告的传播效率究竟有多高"。此外,可测量性必须要做到持续、可靠并且精准。     

Libraries and value propositions: Worth the investment?

What is a library worth? This question has implications for all libraries and the clientele they serve, especially in times of economic uncertainty when libraries often have to justify their existence and demonstrate their worth. One method of assessing this worth is through value propositions, which have been primarily associated with the business sector, wherein an exploratory process is used to discover what customers need from an organization. This article will show how libraries can utilize value proposition strategies to think differently about how their resources and services create value for their respective patron segments. This renewed perspective may encourage librarians to reimagine their purpose, reorganize their focus, and redefine their worth.     

Finding the Theory and Method for the Pedagogy of Teaching Legal Research: A Response to Callister's “Time to Blossom”

In his article “Time to Blossom,” Callister invites legal research experts to begin a discussion as to what theory and methodology would be most effective for teaching legal research. This article suggests that utilizing a tailored form of systems theory in conjunction with active learning methods would allow legal educators not only to teach students in an effective and understandable manner but also to adapt their teaching methods to correspond to changes in the legal research field.     

A Review of “Bite-Sized Marketing: Realistic Solutions for the Overworked Librarian” and “Building a Buzz: Libraries and Word-of-Mouth Marketing”

No abstract available for this article.