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In both virtual and in-person reference transactions, creating a supportive environment for patrons is the crucial first step. Evaluating librarians success in creating a supportive environment, however, is challenging. Language style matching (LSM) is a text analysis technique that measures the level of engagement between people. A high level of LSM has been shown to contribute to a sense of perceived support and other positive social outcomes. In this exploratory study, LSM is used to evaluate >1200 email threads from two virtual reference services to determine the level of engagement between patrons and librarians. Results show that email reference provided through the LibAnswers general reference service demonstrated a moderate to high level of LSM 67% of the time and email reference provided by a liaison librarian demonstrated a moderate to high level of LSM 84% of the time. By measuring how well librarians are meeting patrons' affective needs, LSM has the potential to provide a more holistic assessment of virtual reference services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deselection is a necessary but politically sensitive part of an academic librarian's responsibilities. To provide an overview of the emotional dynamics involved in weeding an academic collection, this article analyzes editorials, articles, and book chapters chronicling faculty response to weeding from a psycholinguistic viewpoint. Using computer-based text analysis, these accounts are examined for the amount and type of emotional content they contain. These findings provide a template for what librarians can expect when beginning a deselection process and point to best practices for working effectively with faculty to create a robust and healthy collection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increasing prevalence of e-books in academic library collections, faculty and librarians have begun to express concern regarding the accessibility of these digital texts for students with physical or learning disabilities. To begin addressing these concerns, the California State University System's Affordable Learning Solutions initiative—a campaign designed to encourage faculty use of library e-books and open-access texts as replacements for expensive textbooks—funded the Ebooks Accessibility Project at San Jose State University (SJSU). The Ebooks Accessibility Project evaluated the major accessibility features of 16 of the most popular academic e-book platforms in academic libraries. It was discovered that single-publisher platforms, such as Gale, Palgrave, and Springer, offered more accessibility features than aggregators like ProQuest and ACLS Humanities. Both single publisher and aggregator platforms, however, lack basic accessibility features that commercial e-book providers have long offered, such as background contrast adjustment and page reflow. On the positive side, most of the publishers evaluated did offer text resizing (or zoom) and were compatible with some form of screen reading technology, the most important features for users with print disabilities. Librarians are encouraged to let publishers know that accessibility is a major consideration in their e-book adoptions and urge their compliance with common accessibility standards. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

While there have been studies on faculty use of streaming video resources in academic libraries, none have focused on the specific needs of ethnic studies faculty. Using a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 13 ethnic studies faculty from two public university campuses, this study found that faculty engagement with video is based upon a pedagogical strategy that responds to the specific demands and goals of ethnic studies curricula, while centering on student needs by using free resources whenever possible. Within this paradigm, faculty choose from three categories of content: key primary and secondary sources; flexible supporting sources; and current topics of interest. Understanding what motivates ethnic study faculty could be helpful as librarians work with vendors and advocate for the content that best meets instructional needs. Librarians can also help improve faculty's instructional outcomes by communicating about licensing options and streaming media availability through the library. • The use of streaming video by ethnic studies faculty is informed by the unique demands of the ethnic studies curricula. • Understanding faculty motivations in choosing videos can help librarians make informed database subscription decisions. • Findings are based on the thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews of ethnic studies faculty on their video use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]