Browsing Produced at Temple by Title
Now showing items 1-20 of 126
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A Passion for Academic Librarianship: Find It, Keep It, Sustain It-A Reflective InquiryWhy do academic librarians do what they do? This article explores the sources of passion that make academic librarianship a rewarding profession. A framework is introduced that examines the relationships within and outside the academy that contribute to the academic librarian's professional passion. The challenge of sustaining professional passion is addressed.
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A Pragmatic and Flexible Approach to Information Literacy: Findings from a Three-Year Study of Faculty-Librarian CollaborationWhile faculty often express dismay at their students' ability to locate and evaluate secondary sources, they may also be ambivalent about how to (and who should) teach the skills required to carry out quality undergraduate research. This project sought to assess the impact of programmatic changes and librarian course integration on students' information literacy (IL) skills. Using an IL rubric to score student papers (n = 337) over three consecutive first-year student cohorts, our study shows that when faculty collaborate with librarians to foster IL competencies, the result is a statistically significant improvement in students' demonstrated research skills. Our study also reveals a collaboration “sweet spot”: the greatest gains accrue when librarians provide moderate input into syllabus and assignment design, followed by one or two strategically placed hands-on library sessions. Successful collaboration thus need not entail completely overhauling content courses so as to make library instruction the centerpiece. Quite the opposite, librarians can help reduce the potential burden on faculty by supporting discipline- and course-specific research goals, as well as by sharing resources and best practices in IL pedagogy.
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ACRL’s Hall of Fame: An Analysis of the Academic/Research Librarian of the Year AwardThe Association of College & Research Libraries’ (ACRL) Academic/Research Librarian of the Year awardees constitute a “hall of fame” for ACRL. This article reports research analyzing 30 years of awardees between 1978 and 2007. Studying the demographics and accomplishments of the awardees contributes to knowledge of how academic librarianship has evolved as a profession and how its values have shifted. As the profession begins to explore and better comprehend the outcomes of its award processes, it may choose to evaluate and redesign them. This study offers several recommendations for change to the Academic/Research Librarian of the Year Award.
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Blended Librarianship: [Re]Envisioning the Role of Librarians as Educator in the Digital Information AgeBlended librarianship is intentionally not library centric (i.e., focused on the building and its physical collections) but, rather, it is librarian centric (i.e., focused on people's skill, knowledge they have to offer, and relationships they build).\n0 tools and emerging communication technologies can be directly present in both environments to provide course related instruction, deliver library resources and tutorials, as well as answer reference questions. [...] by integrating fundamental instructional design skills and knowledge, blended librarians become partners with faculty and other academic professionals in designing courses and incorporating information literacy and research skills into academic programs to achieve student learning outcomes.
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Book Review: Libraries & Gardens: Growing TogetherIn Libraries & Gardens: Growing Together, Carrie Scott Banks and Cindy Mediavilla bring librarianship into conversation with gardening. While the histories of gardens and libraries are intertwined, there has not been much written about library gardens. Banks and Mediavilla’s book encourages us to look at how library gardens “extend and enhance the library’s role as an information center and community space” (x). Writing from public library backgrounds, Banks and Mediavilla focus on how library gardens can contribute to the inclusiveness and accessibility of libraries. The book gives a tour of various kinds of library gardens, including many academic and research library gardens. In discussing library gardens, Libraries & Gardens: Growing Together contributes to a broader conversation about libraries as multisensory, experiential places.
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Collections Are For Collisions: Designing It Into the ExperienceWho among us has never known, however trivial, a serendipitous discovery. More essentially, nearly every librarian has heard at some point in his or her career someone's story about a serendipitous encounter with a book. As a profession we are likely in agreement that serendipitous discovery in the library stacks is a good thing. Think of it as collision with our collections. As our collections become more digital and less tangible, as we move them off the stacks and into onsite or remote storage, and as students spend more time touching keyboards and less time connecting with texts, how likely is it that future patrons will have such experiences. What's odd about the impending decline of this type of engagement is that in other industrial sectors, the very act of serendipity is being engineered into the workflow. Librarians, on the other hand, appear to be excising serendipity out of the library experience. If we believe there is value in the act of serendipity, then it is our responsibility to design the library experience to save it. Adapted from the source document.
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Coming in the Back Door: Leveraging Open Textbooks to Promote Scholarly Communications on CampusTextbook affordability is a critical issue in higher education. Academic librarians have responded by creating programs to encourage faculty to become aware of the cost of textbooks and using open educational resources as an alternative. Another, less obvious reason to start a campus textbook affordability initiative is to establish a culture of openness for all types of open material. Faculty are often much more willing to confront textbook costs than they are costly, pay-walled journals. The author describes how he instituted a project to create more awareness of open content on his campus.