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The article focuses on the role of librarians in United States as information professionals to ensure the understanding of the value of employing a fact-based criterion for evaluating resources. Topics include disregard for facts in news and by political leaders in the U.S. , the use of information literacy in providing us with diverse perspective to work within academic communities, and the combination of information literacy and archiving.

The article focuses on the University of Common Requirements (UCORE)/Roots/Libraries student learning outcomes assessment project conducted at Washington State University in 2013. Data provided compares the students' performance based on learning outcomes including thesis development, source quantity, nature of resources, source analysis, historical roots, argument building, bibliography, and footnotes/citations.

The article looks at the transformation of the role of librarians in information science. It explores the development made by information science in natural language searching programs. The ability of librarians to construct complex search strategies is discussed, as well as the use of restatement as a technique for researching.

Since their inception, virtual reference services have evolved considerably and are now a significant component of library services in many types of library environments. The current paper reports on a study undertaken at a research-intensive academic library that analyzed and evaluated a decade-old virtual reference service. The main goal of the study was to obtain a broad and comprehensive picture of the current service, grounded in the actual day-to-day provision, usage, and organization of the service. The group of librarians involved in the study developed a feasible, efficient, and adaptable methodology for assessing and evaluating a virtual reference service. The developed methodology that combines qualitative and quantitative methods can be used and applied for a similar evaluation of the service in any type of library environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based upon the subject librarian training practice of CALIS Phase III "Librarian Literacy Training and Qualification Certification" in the charge of Shanghai Jiao Tong University Library, this paper elaborates upon a design for a subject librarian training system concerning objectives, methods, courses, tests, organization and management mechanisms. From November 2010 to December 2011, the program has held four phases of liaison librarian training respectively and trained 322 liaisons for 197 universities in China. Additionally, it analyzes major characteristics of the training program and points out what we should note in the training process in order to achieve success in the implementation of subject librarian training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores on the value of libraries and librarians in decision making wherein the libraries provide quality information to enhance the knowledge and expertise of the campus librarians. It examines the impact of teaching practices to the teaching effectiveness of the campus administrators in the universities. It also cites the availability of educational opportunities for the campus library and librarians.

The practice of citing references is integral to scholarship. This paper focuses on three prominent journals for library science: College and Research Libraries, Library Resources and Technical Services, and Reference and User Services Quarterly. Errors in both citations and quotations were found in all three journals, although no statistically significant differences among journals were discovered. Citation errors of less than 10 percent were found for all three journals, while in total, 30.3 quotations were judged to be questionable in some way. The paper includes recommendations for authors, editors and librarians. It also recommends further study of errors in quotations, which appear more troubling than those in citations., The practice of citing references is integral to scholarship. It allows researchers to understand the way that a discipline is constructed, building on the work of earlier scholars. In particular, [...]

Weeding is a technically, emotionally, and politically difficult process for academic librarians, particularly when faced with a collection has not been weeded in years, if ever. Yet there is little research that examines how librarians can be supported in their deselecting activities with training. In this case study, a custom training resource enabled librarians at California State University, Fullerton, to more efficiently and confidently complete their weeding assignments. This paper describes a case study of use of instructional design model 'ADDIE' (Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate) to design and develop a training resource built on the LibGuide platform for librarians tasked with weeding their subject areas. Use of the ADDIE model encouraged librarian buy-in and resulted in the development of thoughtfully designed training that met librarians' needs and facilitated their success in weeding their subject areas. This paper fills a gap in the literature by describing a case study of using instructional design techniques and concepts to develop a local training resource on deselection., Librarians with weeding experience know how emotional and political weeding can be. It's common for community members to complain that that their local library is 'throwing away' books in their [...]

The article discusses various ideas on how to engage faculty with the academic library. Topics include the suggestion to provide information literacy training to the faculty, reference to a paper by Marjorie V. White published in the 2003 issue of the journal "Reference Librarian," in which he discusses reasons why faculty members may be averse to attending library instruction sessions, and academic librarians more capable of teaching students and faculty about information literacy.

The article suggests practices for students, scholars, and librarians to convert from paper-full to paperless literature review to aid in the reading, analyzing, organizing and storing resources. Topics covered include a methodical, reproducible, process that harnesses the power digital tools bring to library research, tips and advice for storing and organizing, reading and annotating, and analyzing and writing, and techniques to help librarians become teachers and research partners.

The article focuses on emergence of libraries as most rapidly expanding educational institution in the U.S. It mentions that adult education researcher Gordon Darkenwald has defined nontraditional students by sociocultural responsibilities instead of age. It also discusses responsibilities that includes full-time employment, parenthood, and financial responsibilities.

The article discusses the authenticity of Wikipedia, free-content Internet encyclopaedia, for students in terms of its content and suggests need for librarians to focus on recruiting editors to address coverage of particular topics. Topics discussed includes suggestions on putting initial details on online social network meetup page, setting up a meetup page on Wikipedia and securing a location on the date of the edit-a-thon.

The article highlights the free open house-style social event, called What's Brewing at Roesch Library, held by the University of Dayton in Ohio featuring local craft breweries designed to market the library's services and facilities to faculty and staff. A background on the origin of the social event and the planning of the event is presented. It also shows the university's promotional efforts for the library and its showcase of library spaces and reading collection through beer tasting.

The article presents suggestions and resources on art auctions and art valuation. It suggests examining the signature or monogram of an artist in painting, print or other artwork. Some of the resources cited include the Arts Signature Dictionary website, the book "Dictionary of Artists" by Emmanuel Benezit and others, the book "Classified Directory of Artist's Signatures, Symbols, and Monograms" by H.H. Caplan, and the Blouin Art Sales Index online resource for art auction records.

The article focuses on a study conducted on the study abroad session in South Africa about social justice. Topics discussed include war, poverty, and political conflicts as the main subjects discussed in news about Africa, the Jewish museum in Africa enabling the students to know about the history of Jewish immigration to South Africa, and the obscured history of South Africa's slavery visible in the Slave Lodge museum.

The article focuses on reference services offered in the libraries to provide one-on-one support to members of the community that the library serves. It mentions that Joan Durrance, retired professor at the School of Information at the University of Michigan, developed the Willingness to Return model for reference success. It also highlights relationship building as part of the personal reference interaction for vocation and avocation as service professionals and librarians.

Reading, Research, and Writing: Teaching Information Literacy with Process-Based Research Assignments. By Mary Snyder Broussard. Chicago: ACRL, 2017. 140 p. Paper. $40 (ISBN: 978-0-8389-8875-6). Research papers are ubiquitous in college, [...]

The article reviews several websites related to historical materials resources including Mapping Gothic France located at http://mappinggothic.org, Darwin Online located at http://darwin-online.org.uk, and The Roaring Twenties located at http://vectorsdev.usc.edu/NYCsound/777b.html.

The article discusses, For librarians to continually demonstrate superior and high-quality service, they must meet the needs of current and potential users. One way that librarians have met the needs of users is by expanding their service offerings online via virtual reference services (VRS). This expansion is particularly critical in the current time of COVID-19.

The article discusses, the pandemic and resulting quarantine changed how libraries operate, including the provision of readers' advisory (RA) service. Access to print titles initially came to a halt, rendering many users' holds lists irrelevant, while queues for some e-books grew longer and longer. Readers lost the ability to browse and discover the physical collection.

The article discusses , anyone who has worked at a public service desk in a library has probably had at least one encounter with a genealogy researcher avidly regaling them with some new fact they learned about their ancestors. Genealogy researchers bring a passion to their efforts that is unmatched, so it behooves libraries to have the best resources on hand. While a lot of the genealogy legwork is done online these days via Ancestry.

The article discusses, libraries are increasingly working to incorporate diversity and inclusion principles into instruction, people with disabilities are often overlooked. As Pionke notes, even though people with disabilities make up 15 percent of the global population, a significantly sized population is understudied and not well understood within the library profession.

The article discusses, The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a large, public university with more than 45,000 students. To serve these students, as well as faculty, staff, and the public, the UCLA Library includes many physical locations. The Charles E. Young Research Library (YRL) is the library for the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) and International Area Studies (IAS). It contains research-level collections in various formats and languages.

The article discusses the results of a study that examined Texas Christian University faculty members' expectations and perceptions of undergraduate student research skills to help improve information literacy initiatives at the university. The faculty members surveyed viewed themselves as having the primary role in teaching research skills to the students. Focus groups identified nine core research skills that were used for the survey, including topic selection and citing sources.

The article describes the backward design process of planning instruction that can be adopted by librarians. The process begins by reflecting about the end of the course and identifying the student learning outcomes to be targeted. Librarians can easily apply the strategy in a variety of instructional situations and communicate the value of information literacy instruction to stakeholders. The backward design process based on L. Dee Fink's course design model requires three steps to follow.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses the reference services issues and the board members, reviewers and column editors of the journal "Reference & User Services Quarterly" (RUSQ).

The article focuses on several aspects of interactive library spaces that use varying degrees of technology: the no-tech walk to the coffee shop, the low-tech use of whiteboard paint, and the high-tech video wall. It mentions about influencing student use of these new interactive spaces through social media feeds such as using Instagram hashtag. It also mentions that Whiteboard paint is an inexpensive alternative to purchasing large whiteboards for meeting spaces and study rooms.

The goal of this quantitative study is to explore the effect of consolidating circulation and reference functions at a single service point in a specialized setting, namely, a large academic music and performing arts library. It analyzes reference transactions before and after the merging of reference and circulation service points. Transaction trends are evaluated based on location within the library, type of question, and question complexity. The authors find that there are significant impacts on reference staff time due to consolidating desks, but the closer proximity led to an increase in activity and allows for referrals that are more successful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

E-book platforms have multiplied among vendors and publishers, complicating not only acquisitions and collection development decisions, but also the user experience. Using a methodology of task-based user testing, the researchers sought to measure and compare user performance of eight common tasks on nine e-book platforms: EBSCO eBooks, ProQuest Ebook Central, Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL), Oxford Reference, Safari Books Online, IGI Global, CRCnetBASE, Springer Link, and JSTOR. Success and failure rates per task, average time spent per task, and user comments were evaluated to gauge the usability of each platform. Findings indicate that platforms vary widely in terms of users' ability and speed in completing known-item searches, navigation tasks, and identification of specialized tools, with implications for library acquisition and user instruction decisions. Results also suggest several key vendor design recommendations for an optimal user experience. The study did not aim to declare a "winning" platform, and all the platforms tested demonstrated both strengths and weaknesses in different aspects, but overall performance and user preference favored ProQuest's Ebook Central platform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, the authors examined the value of research consultations, an important component of reference services. Previous research explored the sustainability and scalability of a large-scale research consultation project from the librarian perspective. Through survey responses from the perspectives of more than 1,500 students, the authors gathered evidence on the impact of research consultations on student confidence and their perceptions of the approachability and helpfulness of library personnel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on several aspects of sources for video game history. It mentions that Kristen Nyitray began her immersion in video games with an Atari 2600 and ColecoVision console and checking out games from her local public library. It mentions that majority of people in the U.S. play video or computer games. It also mentions about the reference of the book "Classic Home Video Games,1972–1984: A Complete Reference Guide" by Brett Weiss.

The article offers information on the creating analog and digital games for reference training for library interns. Topics discussed include the benefits of gamification in trainings such as learning for interns, culminating in a final, comprehensive game; and helping interns acquire competency requires considerable investment in training time. Also mentions providing a high level of customer service in making referrals, supplying directions and answering questions about services and policies.

The article present an interview with Diana Shonrock, President of the Reference & User Services Association (RUSA). Topics discussed include her start in librarianship in Iowa State University (ISU) in Ames, Iowa; her way to a full-fledged career in libraries and working as a liaison without being a librarian; and having great support for ongoing professional development. Also mentions about learning and master library background and information skills.

This exploratory study aims to improve librarian support for undergraduate users as they find, access, evaluate, and appropriately use primary source materials in their research. By approaching objectbased information literacy instruction via the Association of College and Research Libraries' (ACRL) Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education (Framework), this project will promote use of academic library special collections and archives in ways that reinforce the theoretical approach espoused by that document. Primary source evaluations collected before and after one semester of Framework-based instruction indicate that the concepts identified therein are relevant to and support learning with primary sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The maker movement has found a home in public libraries. Field leaders including public libraries in Chicago, Chattanooga, Houston, Louisville, and Toronto have built robust makerspaces, developed maker programming for a diverse range of patrons, connected community experts with library users for the purpose of sharing information, and fostered communities of practice.¹ Characterized by open exploration, intrinsic interest, and creative ideation, the maker movement can be broadly defined as participation in the creative production of physical and digital artifacts in people's day-to-day lives. The maker movement employs a do-it-yourself orientation toward a range of disciplines, including robotics, woodworking, textiles, and electronics. But the maker ethos also includes a do-it-with-others approach, valuing collaboration, distributed expertise, and open workspaces. To many in the library profession, the values ingrained in the maker movement seem to be shared with the aims and goals of public libraries. However, critiques of the maker movement raise questions about current iterations of makerspaces across settings. This article highlights critiques and responses regarding the "democratic" nature of the maker movement, and in particular, the article analyzes ways librarians involved in a prominent public library maker program discursively construct making and maker programming in relation to the maker movement more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study which uses photovoice, a participatory method that combines photography, interviews, and group discussion, to create change regarding the issue of improvement of reference services for marginalized students by academic librarians. Topics include struggles faced by marginalized students in higher education in their academic work, seeking of information by marginalized students in their everyday activities, and centering of user's idea by research of library services.

The article focuses on the role of libraries in improving the sedentary lifestyle of individuals in the United States. Topics include increasing the physical literacy of students through choosing programs in different ways, designing spaces and organizing in different ways, the physical activity at the library of the author at Woodstock, New Brunswick, and understanding of movement-based programs in public libraries.

The article focuses on ways to promote reading among college students through the implementation of best practices from retail and marketing. Topics include correlation of reading for pleasure with academic achievement according to a study conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts, fostering of cognitive development through reading, the waning enthusiasm for books in students due to digital tools, and ways librarians can use to inspire students to read.

The article describes the efforts of the author to enlist faculty in the book-ordering process, along with the approach as well as the results. Topics include the stringent requirements for the research expectations of the faculty at University of South Dakota (USD), examination of the faculty-initiated book ordering, for both hard-copy and online formats in the five departments which the author supports, and modeling his liaison work in a similar way to that of account executives.

The article investigates the information seeking behavior of undergraduate economics students to determine how they pursue the process of learning and use data. It informs that a study was conducted to find out what affects students' ways of seeking data sets and what changes occur over the course of students' data search. It informs that the results show that undergraduates have varying data search concepts and more of the students look for personal interest data than business discipline data.