The Self-Study as an Information Literacy Program Assessment Tool

ABSTRACT

The J. Paul Leonard Library at San Francisco State University is engaged in a number of information literacy efforts. The library's new information literacy coordinators had many questions about the library's current activities and how to further develop its information literacy program. In the 2006–2007 academic year, the Library Education Committee obtained a more accurate understanding of the library's information literacy efforts through a self-study process. A survey instrument was created and distributed to all teaching librarians. The results of this study were contrasted with the Association of College and Research Libraries' (ACRL) Characteristics of Programs of Information Literacy That Illustrate Best Practices: A Guideline in order to facilitate program assessment and long-term planning.     

Salary Information Sources for Librarians' Salaries at Small Colleges and Universities

Salary comparisons are important for the profession. They provide information that administrators and others in positions of authority need to make salary decisions. Although there are annually published sources of information on entry level positions, information on middle to senior level or on specialized positions in small colleges and universities is less readily available. There is no single source for comparing these salaries. To make this task easier, the authors review and evaluate sources of comparative salary data in relation to selected criteria that are particularly useful to small college and university librarians.     

Scientists and the Journal Article: Choices for Access

ABSTRACT

Researchers must choose between many sources when obtaining journal articles. University of Toledo faculty and graduate students in the sciences, pharmacy, and engineering were surveyed to ascertain their preferences in journal article formats and features, and their awareness, frequency of use, and preference ranking of four services: traditional interlibrary loan, electronic journals, and faxes from either a storage depository or the UnCover document delivery service. Speed and print quality topped the desired features; faxing was the least desirable format. Electronic journals and interlibrary loan were the most used services, though there are indications that interlibrary loan is used reluctantly.     

The Dependability of NSSE Scalelets for College- and Department-level Assessment*

College and university administrators, as well as faculty members, are more likely to take responsibility for student learning if they believe that the assessment data represent their students and suggest specific actions for improvement. This study examined whether it is feasible to develop scalelets (i.e., focused measures, usually consisting of four or five items) that provide dependable metrics for assessing student learning at the college or department level. A generalizability analysis of 12 scalelets from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) indicated that the scalelets provided dependable measures of educational effectiveness with 25–50 respondents. *SAIR 2004 Best Paper. Presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Institutional Research, Sandiego, CA, March 2005.     

The experiences of disabled pupils and their families

In this article, Ann Lewis, Professor of Education at the University of Birmingham, and Ian Davison, Jean Ellins, Louise Niblett, Sarah Parsons, Christopher Robertson and Jeremy Sharpe from the research team provide a summary of discussions and selected recommendations arising from four linked projects run between 2004 and 2006. The projects were funded by the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) and looked into the experiences of disabled pupils and their families across England, Scotland and Wales. A central aim of the research was to identify the key concerns and priorities in relation to their experiences of education for children and young people with special educational needs (SEN) or disabilities and their families in the UK. The research encompassed a UK-wide parent survey (N=1776); in-depth case studies of individual children and young people (N=36); group case studies (of, for example, school councils) (N=3); and a series of project advisory groups involving disabled people. Underlying these aspects was an emphasis on the importance and validity of hearing directly from (potentially all) children and young people themselves. Thus the work meshes closely with initiatives worldwide concerning the recognition of children's'voice'in matters that concern them. The authors are not aware of any comparable evidence which focuses in-depth on a wide cross-section of pupils with disabilities or special needs and their families in the UK-wide educational context and which is located alongside concurrent authoritative data concerning the views of parents and carers.     

Redesigning Spaces for Effective Learning: Challenges Facing Riyad Nassar Library in Meeting Users' Perceptions and Expectations

In 2017, the Riyad Nassar Library of the Lebanese American University – Beirut, Lebanon – conducted a student survey as part of its assessment plan to evaluate all functions offered to its stakeholders including space design. The results of said survey are discussed in this paper to ensure if the executed redesign of the library space, carried out during the last 5 years, helped in meeting students' perceptions and expectations. The authors will discuss the methods used to assess space change such as survey, behavioral observation and statistics as well as the challenges faced by the library during this process.