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To document the change over time in African-American/Africana/Black Studies (AABS) librarianship in the United States, this study analyzed 71 position announcements published in physical and digital sources beginning in 1970 through 2019. Using content analysis, the author found that most AABS librarians should expect to have an MLIS and work in academic settings where they develop collections and provide reference services. This study hopes to fill a gap in the current research by exploring how these positions, the job market, and librarianship in this particular field have evolved. Administrators assessing staffing needs, faculty seeking collaborative partners, students interested in AABS librarianship, and anyone curious about the evolution of library work will find this study useful.

About half of Library and Information Science (LIS) journals continue to charge authors to publish articles open access (OA) or do not offer OA publishing at all. To further investigate the financial and other perceived barriers preventing these LIS journals from transitioning to no-publishing fee OA models, this exploratory project surveyed lead editors for each identified LIS journal. Results indicate most of the journals have not discussed transitioning to a no-publishing fee OA model, and that finances are the main barrier. Most also indicated a lack of awareness of their journal's budget. The most popular no-publishing fee OA model was Subscribe to Open.

This study adds to a series investigating the publication patterns of refereed articles in Library and Information Science (LIS) journals by United States academic librarians (USALs). The first study covered 1993-97, and subsequent studies continued in five-year increments. This study presents data and metrics for 2013-17 from fifty-two journals: thirty studied since 1998, seven added in 2003, and fifteen added in 2013. Over the years, the proportion of articles by USALs has decreased, despite evidence that USAL publishing is increasing. This difference suggests that other segments of LIS publishing are increasing faster than USAL publishing. The percentages of coauthorship and USALs who publish three or more articles in five years have increased. Large public research universities with librarians who have faculty status and tenure continue to be the most productive, but evidence suggests an increasing number of academic libraries are contributing to the LIS journal literature. The percentages of USAL and non-USAL articles in the journals studied since 1998 and those studied since 2003 or 2013 point to differences in growth among journals, the importance of new journals, and changes in affiliations of USAL authors and where USALs publish.

Library and librarian involvement in digital humanities (DH) has grown over the past few years. However, it is unclear whether current library and information studies (LIS) programs are properly preparing students for this type of work. This study analyzed course offerings at Canadian ALA-accredited LIS programs. While Canadian ALA-accredited LIS programs offer DH-relevant courses, the number of courses offered and their range/scope vary greatly among institutions. Although many are teaching the technical skills required by the field of DH librarianship, collaboration and project management training remain elusive in most programs.

We must reframe deficit-based residency narratives and provide welcoming, inclusive, and productive working environments to make library residencies an enriching experience for our new colleagues. This research reports survey responses asking how residency supervisors and coordinators communicate with stakeholders to ensure residents work in a welcoming and inclusive environment. We also asked how staff concerns are mitigated and how conversations are framed to avoid miscommunications and microaggressions. Responses echoed issues raised in existing literature, such as suggesting residents' titles be changed to ones that more accurately describe their job duties and make it clear that residents are not students.

Community colleges educate an estimated two-fifths of United States college students. Yet community college librarians do not disseminate enough research to enable their colleagues and their libraries to reach their potential. Little is known about what types of supportive measures might increase productivity. The authors collected quantitative and qualitative survey data, finding that a slight majority of participants conduct research, but less than one third of those who research share their findings. Key challenges include lack of time, lack of funding, and lack of confidence. A new baseline understanding will provide a foundation for initiatives to support increased representation.

This study examines the evolution of current interests and emerging characteristics in library and information science (LIS) from Chinese iSchools, including an analysis of the LIS landscape, space distribution, citation, emerging characteristics, and collaborations. This study considers a non-parametric approach to outline the structure of the iSchool movement in China, while clustering analysis helped us obtain information about the descriptions generated within unsupervised learning groups. It was found that Chinese iSchools play an intermediary role in the international development of Chinese LIS, which further promotes the dissemination and exchange of knowledge and international cooperation in LIS.

This study evaluated authorship in academic librarianship journals by assessing factors such as occupation, institutional affiliation, national affiliation, and coauthor relationships. The findings showed increased coauthorship, reinforcing the findings of previous studies. However, academic library practitioners as authors declined. Authorship was dominated by English-speaking Western nations with very high Human Development Indexes (HDI), and U.S. authorship was disproportionately represented by research-intensive (R1) doctoral institutions. Implications for diversity of representation and relevance to applied practice are discussed, along with suggestions for journal editorial boards to evaluate their content solicitation and promotion, peer review processes, and author support services.

Librarianship is constantly confronted with unexpected and quickly evolving sociotechnical challenges, yet the documents that define the core professional competencies for librarians are infrequently updated. Based upon survey responses collected from 383 working librarians located in the United States, we describe a set of gaps between current competency guidelines and current library realities with regard to practice, management, communication, career development, relations, and personal attributes. We argue that professional library organizations, educators, and policymakers could formulate more relevant and impactful core competency documents by deliberately integrating the on-the-ground insights of librarians' lived experience.

Research data services are increasingly offered by academic libraries. As a result, librarians may need to upskill to provide data services and build capacity. This study measures the current level of data services skills of academic librarians and explores preferred methods of continuing education. An online survey was circulated asking respondents to self-assess data skills in four categories. The results capture a baseline of self-assessed data skills and show statistical significance between the percentage of time a librarian provides data services and higher levels of technical skill sets. The findings support the hiring of data librarians in academic libraries offering data services and providing training for librarians who provide any level of data services.

In the past decade, cataloguing and classification and information literacy have experienced a critical turn, acknowledging the political, economic, and social forces that shape complex information environments. Library user experience (UX) has yet to undergo such a transformation, however; instead, it continues to be seen as a toolkit of value-neutral approaches for evaluating and improving library services and spaces to enhance user satisfaction and engagement. Library UX draws upon ethnography but is also informed by the principles and values of usability and design. Little attention has been paid to the origins or epistemological underpinnings of UX as a construct, the ways these inform UX practice, and, ultimately, how they impact what academic libraries are and what they do. With the exception of a 2016 article by Lanclos and Asher, the relationship among corporatism, UX, and the mission and values of academic libraries has yet to be acknowledged or examined. This paper seeks to address this gap by drawing upon literature from LIS, anthropology and human computer interaction to interrogate library UX. While a handful of library UX practitioners have started to promote a more thoughtful study of individuals' activities and needs, in the main, library UX remains a theoretically weak practice, one that sets out to solve complex problems with practical "solutions." The failure to interrogate UX as a construct and a practice necessarily forecloses the user-centered problems we address, the tools and strategies we use, and the solutions we propose. We contend that UX would benefit from a deeper engagement with user-centered theories emerging from Library and Information Science (LIS) and critical and feminist perspectives on practice, embodiment, and power or risk perpetuating oppressive, hegemonic ideas about the academic library as a white space and its users as able-bodied.

Using the practice of embedded librarianship, a professor from the Graduate School of Education and the Education Librarian at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey collaborated to investigate its impact on the inherent transactional distance that exists in an online graduate course. Using Michael G. Moore's three relational distances existing in the online environment--"teacher-student," "student-student," "student-course content"--the authors added two areas--"instructor-librarian" and "student-librarian"--that can close the transactional distance in online courses. Through course activities, structure, and access to the embedded librarian and specific library resources, students had increased opportunities for engagement, thereby reducing transactional distance.

This study measured the relative academic impact of articles by LIS practitioners by analyzing library and information science articles published between 2005 and 2014. The results revealed that, although practitioners were not the main knowledge contributors, the academic impact of articles by practitioners was not significantly lower than that of articles by academics. No significant differences in academic impact were present between any two types of coauthored articles. Articles from academic-practitioner collaboration were cited earlier than articles from practitioner-practitioner and academic-academic collaborations. This study suggests that LIS practitioners appear to benefit from collaborative scholarship with LIS researchers through more citations and higher impact.

Narrative inquiry, a phenomenological qualitative research methodology, examines individual human experiences--stories. Yet, researchers in Library and Information Science (LIS)--a human-focused profession--have infrequently used it. This article introduces narrative inquiry and provides a literature review of the few LIS studies using it. Next, it extrapolates on Coralie McCormack's "storying stories," a multifaceted approach used to analyze narrative inquiry research data. Finally, the article outlines potential uses for narrative inquiry in LIS research.

While much of the literature on gender in librarianship approaches this issue at an organizational level, this qualitative study investigates how individuals working in libraries perceive their gender identities as a resource for their professional goals and how this intersects with other social identities including race and sexuality. Using a constructivist grounded theory approach to analyze in-depth interviews with 29 librarians from a variety of backgrounds, we develop four overarching themes: "Visibility and Connection to Library Users," "Credibility and Presumed Competence," "Lack of Awareness and Hyperawareness," and "Being Your Authentic Self and Concealing Yourself."

Over the past decade, evidence from disciplines ranging from biology to economics has suggested that many scientific studies may not be reproducible. This has led to declarations in both the scientific and lay press that science is experiencing a "reproducibility crisis" and that this crisis has consequences for the extent to which students, faculty, and the public at large can trust research. Faculty build on these results with their own research, and students and the public use these results for everything from patient care to public policy. To build a model for how academic libraries can support reproducible research, the authors conducted a review of major guidelines from funders, publishers, and professional societies. Specific recommendations were extracted from guidelines and compared with existing academic library services and librarian expertise. The authors believe this review shows that many of the recommendations for improving reproducibility are core areas of academic librarianship, including data management, scholarly communication, and methodological support for systematic reviews and data-intensive research. By increasing our knowledge of disciplinary, journal, funder, and society perspectives on reproducibility, and reframing existing librarian expertise and services, academic librarians will be well positioned to be leaders in supporting reproducible research.

Although studies related to diversity within librarianship as a profession are increasing, few have examined librarians with disabilities--and none so far have included their voices or perspectives. This qualitative study involved interviews with ten academic librarians with disabilities in Canada. With a grounding in the social model of disability, it examines their workplace experiences and concerns and the barriers they face within the context of cultural assumptions about disability and work, finding that the major barriers encountered are lack of awareness of disability issues and negative cultural stereotypes of disability.

Growth in online course delivery has created challenges and opportunities for academic librarians. Working with an online undergraduate course for adult students, three academic librarians revised their model for embedded practice, focusing on high touch and quality contact with the students. Using a citation analysis of final papers collected over several quarters, we compared sufficiency of sources, quality of sources, selection of sources, and diversity of perspectives in bibliographies created before and after our revised curriculum. Findings show that our added attention to this cohort resulted in improvements across all of these metrics.

Lived experience encompasses the perceptions, feelings, and context of an individual's human experience. Researching lived experience can be a way of understanding identity, emotions, perceptions, and contexts to develop a more thoughtful understanding of human experience. This research explores the following questions: what are the lived experiences of people of color who work as academic librarians in the profession; what are the contexts of their experiences; and how do these librarians see themselves? Through qualitative research using a phenomenological approach, this research reveals the complex, nuanced, and varied lived experiences of academic librarians of color navigating a predominantly white profession.

This paper presents assessment data from a first-year writing library partnership to examine the relationship between student source use and written synthesis. It finds that first-year students could locate peer-reviewed, scholarly sources but that these sources were poorly integrated in their arguments--if they were used at all. In contrast, it finds that students attempted to synthesize their in-class reading material, suggesting that students "tack on" outside sources. Ultimately, this paper argues that librarians may want to consider shifting their instructional focus from traditional one-shot sessions to other solutions recommended by the literature.

There are existing studies on data curation programs in library science education and studies on data services in libraries. However, there is not much insight into how educational programs have prepared data professionals for practice. This study asked 105 practicing professionals how well they thought their education prepared them for professional experience. It also asked supervisors about their perceptions of how well employees performed. After analyzing the results, the investigators of this study found that changing the educational model may lead to improvements in future library data services. A list of notes is included.

Jeffrey Beall's blog listing of potential predatory journals and publishers, as well as his "Criteria for Determining Predatory Open-Access (OA) Publishers" are often looked at as tools to help researchers avoid publishing in predatory journals. While these "Criteria" have brought a greater awareness of OA predatory journals, these tools alone should not be used as the only source in determining the quality of a scholarly journal. Employing a three-person independent judgment-making panel, this study demonstrates the subjective nature of Beall's "Criteria" by applying his "Criteria" to both OA and non-OA Library and Information Science journals (LIS), to demonstrate that traditional peer-reviewed journals could be considered predatory. Many of these LIS journals are considered as top-tier publications in the field and used when evaluating researcher's publication history for promotion and tenure.

The purpose of this research was to evaluate academic library residency programs that successfully recruit and retain academic librarians of color. This study examines library residencies in the United States and discusses findings of two nationwide surveys. One survey posed questions to residents about the structure of their residencies, aspects residents found most helpful for career advancement, and their thoughts on diversity initiatives. The coordinators were asked many of the same questions as the residents but also about the administrative aspects of their programs. The survey responses reveal a need to provide residents with structured mentoring, along with a sense of belonging and value. Library residency programs can play an integral part in the larger recruitment, retention, and diversity initiatives in the profession.

This study is a systematic review of the library and information science (LIS) literature related to international students and academic libraries. A systematic review involves the methodical collection and analysis of a body of literature and is growing in popularity in the LIS field. Three well-known LIS databases were systematically searched for articles related to the topic, and manual bibliography searches were conducted to find additional publications. Journal articles, book chapters, and conference papers were included or excluded based on established criteria. Findings show that articles published about international students and academic libraries have increased steadily between 1990 and 2014. The majority of authors are affiliated with universities and institutions in the United States, although an increase in represented countries is apparent. Fewer than half of the articles can be considered original research, and surveys are the most popular method for data collection. The LIS field--and international students--would benefit from further exploration of this topic, particularly from original research with practical implications.

Understanding perceptions of Library and Information Science (LIS) students on two dimensions--belief in the importance (BIM) of a set of core information competencies, and Self-Efficacy (SE)--is pursued. Factor analysis implementation raises a clear distinction between BIM and SE results. This analysis points to two sets of competencies: principal competencies reflected the most positive insights from students, while the secondary ones were the most weakly perceived and consequently the most in need of encouragement. This is one of the few studies on the subjective profile of LIS students, including improvement initiatives relating to the weakest competencies.

Although cited reference studies are common in the library and information science literature, they are rarely performed in nonacademic institutions or in the atmospheric and oceanic sciences. In this paper, we analyze more than 400,000 cited references made by authors affiliated with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration between 2009 and 2013. Our results suggest that these methods can be applied to research libraries in a variety of institutions, that the results of analyses performed at one institution may not be applicable to other institutions, and that cited reference analyses should be periodically updated to reflect changes in authors' referencing behavior.

Central to the ongoing success of the liaison model is the need for liaison librarians to stay informed and up-to-date about recent developments in the subject areas of their assigned academic departments and programs. This article describes an exploratory study conducted to determine whether information obtained from the social media accounts of discipline-based scholarly associations can be used by liaison librarians as a no-cost expedient method of staying informed and up-to-date. The results of the study provide insights into the disciplines and associations that are using social media, the social media platforms that associations are using, the quantity and type of information that associations are posting, and the potential for liaisons to use the information as a way of staying current in their assigned subject areas.

It has been almost 50 years since Robert Taylor published his classic 1968 article, "Question-Negotiation and Information Seeking in Libraries," in "College & Research Libraries"; yet much of what that article discussed is as fresh today as it was back then. It has been identified as a classic because it has enduring themes that have prevailed over time. Taylor was one of the first to systematically study how users formulate questions and how those questions get translated into the language of the information system. By studying users and the librarians who help them, he was able to identify his now-famous four levels of information need: visceral, conscious, formalized, and compromised. He also studied how librarians take these needs--especially the compromised need--and adapt them to the existing information systems. Throughout the article, Taylor talks about the interface between the human with an information need and the information system that is expected to fill that need. While today, of course, information is much more available and accessible than it was in Taylor's day, users still have problems finding information--and reference librarians still need to communicate with those users to figure out exactly what they want. The four levels of understanding of the information need that Taylor identified almost fifty years ago remain important factors in searching today. This is perhaps Taylor's greatest contribution--refocusing the conversation about information seeking away from the tools and the sources and toward the people who use them. It is Taylor's human focus that has made this paper a classic--and that will probably continue to define it as a classic well into the future.

In many academic and professional fields, the society-sponsored journal has for a century had a unique position in scholarly discourse. An annual meeting and conference provided intellectual exchange and social stimulation, while the journal provided a more formal mechanism to communicate, to review, to evaluate, and to certify. Changes in scholarly production and distribution, combined with a growing diversity in how research itself is conducted, provide "College & Research Libraries" ("C&RL") new opportunities to maintain its leadership position in the library field. The 75th anniversary of the journal is an opportune time for a bold examination of how ACRL and "C&RL" can continue to facilitate the scholarship of librarianship. Recognizing this changing context for professional communication among academic librarians and for academic library issues, the author uses this article as a platform to suggest a number of specific issues for consideration. While many such issues may cross beyond the boundaries of "C&RL," the strength of a journal is that it has an editor and an editorial board that provide the continuity needed for strategic planning and investment over time. Thus, these considerations are framed as being for "C&RL" more so than ACRL broadly, even though a range of partnerships and organizational arrangements might be used to explore and in some cases realize these possibilities.

This article articulates and defends a student-centered approach to reference and instructional librarianship defined by authentic engagement with students' interests. A review of the history of the construct of authenticity in philosophy, humanistic and existential psychology, and contemporary educational psychology is traced. Connections are drawn between the philosophy of authentic engagement and the tradition in librarianship of "Counselor Librarianship." Recommendations for applications to the library context are then outlined.

This study analyzes the status and background of authors publishing in high-impact library science journals. Twenty-three high-impact journals were selected in this study by both quantitative and qualitative measures, while the analysis of author background focuses on whether the author holds a faculty status position with a tenure track. This study finds that 76% of academic librarians publishing in top-tier library science journals have faculty status.

As long as empirical research has existed, researchers have been doing "data management" in one form or another. However, funding agency mandates for doing formal data management are relatively recent, and academic libraries' involvement has been concentrated mainly in the last few years. The National Science Foundation implemented a new mandate in January 2011, requiring researchers to include a data management plan with their proposals for funding. This has prompted many academic libraries to work more actively than before in data management, and science librarians in particular are uniquely poised to step into new roles to meet researchers' data management needs. This study, a survey of science librarians at institutions affiliated with the Association of Research Libraries, investigates science librarians' awareness of and involvement in institutional repositories, data repositories, and data management support services at their institutions. The study also explores the roles and responsibilities, both new and traditional, that science librarians have assumed related to data management, and the skills that science librarians believe are necessary to meet the demands of data management work. The results reveal themes of both uncertainty and optimism--uncertainty about the roles of librarians, libraries, and other campus entities; uncertainty about the skills that will be required; but also optimism about applying "traditional" librarian skills to this emerging field of academic librarianship.

Since the earliest days of the profession, academic librarians have attempted to reconcile their status within the academy. This project takes a new approach to this effort by using Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal's "Four Frames" model to analyze the issues. To more closely examine the dynamics, tensions, and implications associated with librarians' professional status within the academy, we discuss the role of the academic librarian in the context of each of Bolman and Deal's frames: Structural, Human Resource, Political, and Symbolic. In this discussion, we demonstrate that librarians are positioned to address human resource (as defined by Bolman and Deal), political, and symbolic factors contributing to their status within the academy. Also, while we establish that the relationship between library faculty and disciplinary faculty plays a role in library faculty status, we conclude that library faculty status is constructed by a number of forces. We further conclude that many of the political and symbolic conditions experienced by librarians are rooted in structural and human resource factors controlled by upper-level administration in both libraries and the universities.

This study which is based on the Technological Acceptance Model (TAM), seeks to explore whether librarians and LIS students are familiar with the newest technological innovations and whether they are ready to accept them. The research was conducted in Israel during the first and second semesters of the 2012 academic year and considered two populations: librarians and LIS students. Researchers used two questionnaires to gather data: a personal details questionnaire, and a mobile technology questionnaire. On the whole, the current study supported the two core variables of the TAM (perceived ease of use and usefulness), as well as personal innovativeness that may predict librarians' and students' behavioral intention to use mobile services in the library.

In the library science field, there is no professionally accepted tiered list of journals in the United States to guide librarians, as there is in other academic disciplines. This situation creates a challenge for both new and experienced librarians who wish to make a serious contribution to librarianship by publishing articles. This article outlines a methodology used at the Libraries of Purdue University, which could be adapted by other university libraries, to create a tiered list of journals tailored to the institution. The article begins with a literature review that identifies a short list of top-level journals. This is followed by the methodology that uses expert opinion surveys, acceptance and circulation rates, impact factors, h-indexes, and journals with local faculty articles. Tables with the journals ranked into three tiers are included.

Scholarly journals provide a record of the research, issues, and concerns of a field. Authors have their names associated with their individual articles, while editors are connected with a publication. However, there is another group of individuals who are often left out of the record, although their contributions are just as critical in the formation of scholarly journals. This article will take a look at this group of peer reviewers, to provide demographic data as well as understanding for the reasons individuals take on the duty of peer reviewer.

This research uses the h-index to rank the quality of library and information science journals between 2004 and 2008. Selected open access (OA) journals are included in the ranking to assess current OA development in support of scholarly communication. It is found that OA journals have gained momentum supporting high-quality research and publication, and some OA journals have been ranked as high as the best traditional print journals. The findings will help convince scholars to make more contributions to OA journal publications, and also encourage librarians and information professionals to make continuous efforts for library publishing.

Studies of information-seeking behaviors are common in the professional literature for library and information studies. This study examines the generalizability of findings of single-institution studies to other institutions by performing an institution-to-institution comparison of the results obtained from an information-seeking behavior survey sent to engineering faculty at twenty research institutions.

Library faculty are often tenure track, requiring a record of significant publishing and service before achieving tenure. However, meaningful tools and methods for evaluating the scholarship of librarianship frequently fall short of providing an accurate picture of the scholarship of any particular candidate. The authors conducted a case study analyzing the research output of Oregon State University (OSU) Libraries' faculty using the Boyer Classifications and Blake's research methodologies. Broadening our view of acceptable formats and outlets and learning how to communicate and assess our scholarship within the academy are key issues that require continued exploration.

Using data from the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates, this paper examines earnings in the library science labor market and assesses the impact of gender on the income attainment process. We use this cross-sectional dataset to determine if there are significant income differences between male and female library science professionals. The approach taken in this paper is to build a theoretical model of income attainment for librarians. We then discuss the methodology used to analyze the data and test the model, followed by a discussion of the results and recommendations for further research.

This guest editorial discusses the underrepresentation of community colleges in the literature on academic libraries/librarianship. Highlights include the roots of the problem, why this research is important, overcoming barriers, and sources of support. (Contains 6 references.) (MES)

Argues that unless issues of machine help and human help are given explicit attention by the library profession, the disappearance of human help in patron assistance without input is likely. Discusses convergent commercial- and academic-sector trends, implications for the profession, and three policy alternatives. Presents a patron self-help scenario. (PEN)

Argues that aggressive and informed recruitment efforts are needed to reflect the library and information science (LIS) profession's commitment to a diverse work force. Discusses recruitment theory, outlining personal factors influencing recruitment, and implications for practice. Makes recommendations for LIS recruitment efforts. (PEN)

Refutes the claim that top-rated programs in library science tend to maintain and enhance their reputation by hiring their own and each other's graduates and that this pattern of inbreeding was likely to be harmful to the field. Concludes convincing evidence was not provided and the true situation may be other than claimed. (PEN)

A study of 107 academic library position announcements (1990-94) for systems librarians analyzed position titles, responsibilities, degree requirements, required skills, reporting lines, and salaries. The study concluded that systems responsibilities change constantly, that interpersonal skills are essential, and that 38% of the examined position announcements lacked a Master's of Library Science (MLS) requirement. (PEN)