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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.

In this article we connect critical librarianship and its practices of information literacy (IL) with working-class experiences of higher education (HE). Although the research literature and professional body of knowledge of critical information literacy (CIL), is one of the most theoretically-developed areas of wider critical librarianship (Critlib) movement, working-class knowledge and experiences remain underrepresented. One reason for this is that the values, behaviour and assumptions of library and HE workers are shaped by a HE system which inculcates middle-class values and cultural capitals within students, and stigmatises working-class students as lacking or in deficit. Hegemonic, or noncritical, IL proselytises middle-class values and assumptions about academic practices and skills development including the notion of an ideal student with behaviour and markers of identity which reflect those most privileged by wider society. In contrast CIL, framed as "the" socially-just practice of IL is theoretically well-placed to support working-class library workers in destabilising this alongside middle-class accomplices. Employing Yosso's (2005) concept of community and cultural wealth (CCW), we analyse how library workers can recognise working-class cultural wealth within the context of CIL and wider working practices. As such narrative accounts are lacking in the literature, we utilise collaborative autoethnography (CAE) (Chang et al., 2013) to consider and interpret our own experiences of libraries when we were university students ourselves, and more recently as HE workers of working-class heritage.

While significant progress has been made in broadening information literacy's (IL's) scope, its conception of the user and their relationship to information remains painfully limited. This is particularly evident when the affective or emotional factors of information seeking behaviour are considered. Thus far, IL's models and discourses have failed to acknowledge emotion's fundamentally disruptive nature and have either ignored, repressed, or misrepresented users' emotions. This has resulted in a deeply limited and inaccurate conception of the user's information needs, and this has a particularly harmful impact on marginalised users and users engaging with affectively fraught information. This article seeks to address this oversight, initially by outlining the origins of IL's repression of emotion and then examining the consequences of this repression in the standardised IL models; specifically in Carol C. Kuhlthau's Information Search Process and the ACRL's "Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education." Subsequently, this essay will examine several critical models of librarianship and IL--including Holocaust librarianship and Indigenous conceptions of relationality--in order to illuminate models of IL that adopt a relational perspective that enables an engagement with the affective elements of the user's information needs. Finally, this essay will suggest that these relational perspectives facilitate the adoption of an ethics of care that helps address the insufficiencies inherent to our current conceptions of IL.

In this article, the authors explore whether academic libraries are truly capable of implementing a critical information literacy (CIL) praxis and if there are inherent threats to critical librarianship when incorporating CIL into the curriculum. The survey instrument in this study gathered data from 92 academic library instructors based within the United States. The study identified that 41% of question respondents had received negative comments or criticisms about including CIL in their library curriculum through various formats: online modules, one-shot instruction, course-embedded units, and credit-bearing courses. In addition, 29% of question respondents felt that pushback from academic teaching staff, other librarians/administration, and students threatened the integrity of CIL. This research helps to illustrate the fragility of CIL and how librarians have faced pushback when critical content is incorporated into the information literacy (IL) curriculum.

What began in a library science course as a collection development project serendipitously transformed into varied learning experiences for students across disciplines and program levels. This article shares the journey of how a singular lesson idea blossomed into an unintentional, multidisciplinary project that led to unexpected learning outcomes for all involved. [The page range cited on the .pdf (p97-107) is incorrect. The correct page range is p95-107.]

This study is a mixed design study on a sample of 87 respondents to a questionnaire in the Information Studies and Library Science program in Brno that identifies their attitudes towards hybrid teaching. Hybrid teaching is understood as synchronous education with the choice of participating in an online or face-to-face educational session. The students declared that they prefer this form of education and wish to continue using it long term. The study shows that students in the online environment prefer more passive and individual forms of educational interaction because they are connected to such education and can concentrate on it. The study offers a basic description of the phenomenon and identifies further areas for developing educational approaches and activities.

Information literacy (IL) open learning object repositories (LORs) provide a space for librarians to find and exchange instruction resources and lessons. Given many librarians enter the workforce with little or no formal training or educational opportunities to learn about pedagogy, these repositories are indispensable resources to the Library and Information Science field. This study explored the contents of two popular IL LORs, Project Cora and the Association of College and Research Libraries Framework for Information Literacy Sandbox, to uncover how users engage with the resources and how the repositories differ. This study's findings suggest that while resources within the LORs are being used, yearly submissions have stagnated. Intentional assessment of disciplinary and information literacy concept gaps, followed by targeted calls for resources, may improve and increase engagement with the repositories as communities of practice.

The use of game in education has been evidenced to improve students' engagement in learning. However, much research shows that the use of game in learning is only effective for high school students, while its use for students of higher education is limited. Research on game in education has predominantly been occupied by Kahoot! while Quizizz has received less analysis. This research aims to explore student perception of Quizizz as a learning media and the related obstacles experienced in a library science study program of State Islamic University of North Sumatera in Indonesia. The research uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, such as survey and focused group discussion, with a sample of 272 undergraduate students. The study found that the use of games in learning actively increased student engagement and led to a significant improvement in independence and self-control in learning. During the learning activity students maintain that they gain their self-confidence while enjoying the game. The research suggests that to increase learning achievement, educators should use various teaching strategies that encourage students' active mental and physical engagement. Additionally, it is expected that this learning experience and content will enhance students' retentive memory.

Paul Zurkowski is often considered the "father" of the term, "information literacy" (IL). There were, however, other authors who, at a similar time, were writing about concepts we now consider fundamental to the nature of IL. A work of particular significance is Alvin Toffler's "Future Shock." In this classic text -- better known beyond information science than within it -- Toffler addresses major themes such as the importance of evaluating information, the need to construct sense from the material we access and the dangers of "information overload". He is concerned, too, with the more general requirement that, increasingly, people must "learn how to learn". Personal experience has shown this author that it is possible to create a tool for information users from the closely related ideas of Zurkowski and Toffler, and that each writer recognises independently that the skills associated with the traditional literacies are insufficient if an individual is to function effectively in modern society. Whilst Zurkowski is cited with greater frequency in discussions on IL, it may be Toffler who has done more to highlight to a wider readership the value of information skills in an ever-changing world. Perhaps Zurkowski's biggest achievement lies in providing a memorable two-word summarising label to his field of interest; it is one that has endured and remains pertinent today, some fifty years on.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate information literacy (IL) education in library schools in Nigeria, to establish whether they are in line with international and national library and information science (LIS) standards ('library schools' here indicates departments offering LIS qualifications within higher education institutions). The study used document analysis and qualitative methods. First, departmental documents from heads of department and students' handbooks containing the LIS curriculum were collected from thirty (30) library schools in Nigeria and analyzed. Secondly, lecturers in the department of LIS from the thirteen (13) library schools offering an IL course were engaged in an interview. The study revealed a significant improvement compared to previous studies as 13 out of the 30 Nigerian universities surveyed offered the course 'information literacy' as a stand-alone course in the department of LIS. Unfortunately, the study found that majority of the LIS departments do not have IL laboratories for students to acquire practical skills. These findings will provide useful data for stakeholders in the university system such as supervising bodies, university management, heads of department, and library associations and regulatory bodies, assisting them in the creation of policies related to the integration of IL courses into the school system and in enforcing the implementation of these policies.

Employers value soft skills and often report a "skills gap," resulting in calls on higher education to teach these skills more widely. However, few studies have examined faculty perspectives on soft skills. The researchers conducted a nationwide survey of faculty in the fields of business, education, engineering, library science, nursing, and social work to explore whether and how they are teaching soft skills. Most faculty believe soft skills are important and are integrating them into their courses, although there are variations by discipline. Methods for teaching soft skills are varied, but "passive" approaches like readings and lectures are most prominent. The results have implications for curriculum development and will be of interest to faculty across these disciplines as well as employers in the associated industries.

Assessment of Learning in Higher Education (ALHE) has, since its roots in the early 1980s, grown into a routine activity in higher education institutions in the United States that is led by thousands of professionals who contribute to a growing body of scholarship. Yet, there are few formal ALHE training programs, no licensure or certification for ALHE professionals, no accreditation for ALHE programs, and only a handful of dedicated journals, resulting in limited outside recognition of ALHE as a discipline. Failure to fully establish ALHE as a discipline puts ALHE in a dangerous position, leaving its progress in advancing student learning vulnerable to external forces. The purposes of this paper are to examine the progress ALHE has made in advancing as a discipline and to explore the benefits and tensions inherent in growing ALHE as a discipline. Using lessons from Library Science, the paper concludes by identifying steps that show promise for continuing the advancement of ALHE as a discipline and ensuring ALHE is ready to meet the needs of future generations of learners.

The purpose of this research is to get university students' views on a promising library and information education model. This study was designed in the phenomenological pattern, which is one of the qualitative research methods. The study group of the research consists of 80 students studying at various universities in Kazakhstan in the 2021-2022 academic year. Research data were collected with a semi-structured interview form developed by the researchers. The data were evaluated by content analysis method. As a result, it has been determined that the vast majority of university students sometimes use university libraries to access information. Majority of the students gained knowledge education and they categorised them as gaining the ability to access information, gaining the ability to use information, gaining critical thinking skills and gaining an understanding of accessing information in an ethical way. Students' views on creating a promising library are mostly in the direction of digital and traditional library options, print and digital-rich resource content, resource alternatives with language options, ease of access for the disabled, audiobook options in digital libraries and contemporary architectural design in traditional libraries. Students' views on the knowledge education model that should be created for a promising library are mostly providing information literacy and library access skills courses in each department, providing online orientation support, organising seminars on library practices in the university environment and the standards of accessing information through the library.

A college class of non-science majors completed a metadata project in 15 weeks for a Women's History collection at a southern 4-year university. The class "First and Second Wave of Feminism" explored for the first time a scientific method of cataloguing while learning to promote, restore and preserve the history of women in the United States. This class completed a service-learning project with the university's Special Collection and Archives enabling them to learn library science metadata skills. The Judith and Warren Kaplan Women's History collection includes ephemera, documents and books all dealing on women's history and therefore of interest to the students in the above-mentioned class. The user centric metadata included open-ended questions for students to answer such as "Importance" of women's history and "Why" the item was chosen to catalogue. After careful reading of student's reflections on the project's impact on them, several conclusions can be reached. Students preferred to express their choice and description as much as the reflection necessary to complete the Service-Learning project. Students also prefer to relate each item from something learn in the classroom as a way of matching both book and activity-centered experiences.

This work expands the literature and research focused on career change students enrolled in an online master's program by examining the literature regarding transitions, motivations, and advising support for career changers. Also studied are the motivations of career change students enrolled in two different online, synchronous graduate programs. The study outlined offerings to this special population in terms of full-time primary role academic and career advising. It was found that participants utilized personalized communications and orientation programming provided by academic and career advising.

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.

This mixed methods study explored the impact of a collaborative experience on perceptions of school librarian candidates (SLCs) and preservice teacher candidates (PTCs) as they worked to integrate technology into lesson plans effectively. The group under investigation consisted of 83 PTCs in the teacher preparation program who were enrolled in selected sections of a required technology course and graduate students in a School of Library and Information Science preparation program at the same institution. Forty of the PTCs were part of the control group and 43 were in the treatment group, which received collaborative support from the SLCs. One important finding is that PTCs perceived SLCs as valuable resources for integrating technologies, particularly for designing lesson plans that integrated technology. Additionally, both PTCs and SLCs realized the importance of teacher-librarian collaboration (TLC) in their future campus roles. A key recommendation is for teacher education programs to embed opportunities for TLC experiences for improving PTCs' technology integration and lesson planning.

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.

Despite ongoing efforts to improve database accessibility, aggregated database vendors concede that they do not have complete control over document accessibility. Instead, they point to the responsibility of journal publishers to deliver articles in an accessible format. This may increase the likelihood that users with disabilities will encounter articles that are not compatible with a screen reader. To better understand the extent of the problem, a document accessibility audit was conducted of randomly selected articles from EBSCO's Library & Information Source database. Full-text articles from 12 library science journals were evaluated against two measures of screen reader compatibility: HTML format (the optimal format for screen readers) and PDF accessibility conformance. Findings showed inconsistencies in HTML format availability for articles in the selected journals. Additionally, the entire sample of PDF articles failed to meet the minimum standard of PDF Universal Accessibility of containing a tagged structure. However, all PDF articles passed accessibility permissions tests, so could be made accessible retroactively by a third party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To study library guides, as published on Springshare's LibGuides platform, new approaches are needed to expand the scope of the research, ensure comprehensiveness of data collection, and reduce bias for content analysis. Computational methods can be utilized to conduct a nuanced and thorough evaluation that critically assesses the resources promoted in library guides. Web-based library guides are curated by librarians to provide easy access to high-quality information and resources in a variety of formats to support the research needs of their users. Recent scholarship considers library guides as valuable resources and as de facto publications, highlighting the need for critical study. In this article, the authors present a novel model for comprehensively gathering data about a specific genre of books from individual LibGuide pages and applying computational methods to explore the resultant data. Beginning with a pre-selected list of 159 books, we programmatically queried the titles using the LibGuides Community search engine. After cleaning and filtering the resultant data, we compiled a list of 20,484 book references (of which 6,212 are unique) on 1,529 LibGuide pages. By testing against inclusion and exclusion criteria to ensure relevancy, we identified a total of 281 titles relevant to our topic. To gain insights for future study, citation analysis metrics are presented to reveal patterns of frequency, co-occurrence, and bibliographic coupling of books promoted in LibGuides. This proof-of-concept could be adopted for a variety of applications, including assessment of collections, public services, critical librarianship, and other complex questions to enable a richer and more thorough understanding of the information landscape of LibGuides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In terms of utility and technical quality, open-source software solutions have become a common option for many libraries. As barriers to adoption have been reduced and systems such as FOLIO appear poised to change the landscape of LIS technology, it is worth examining how the use of open source can support the normative core values of librarianship and to outline a strategy for critical engagement with the technology that is beneficial to patrons and libraries. Such a strategy will require further codification, institutionalization, and investigation of open source at many levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares website usability—specifically library users’ understanding of library terms—for fifty-one original research studies between 2012-2021, with the findings of John Kupersmith’s 2011 white paper “Library Terms That Users Understand.” Studies reported approximately twice as many terms that users didn’t understand than terms users did understand, with some terms appearing in both categories. Analysis of the findings suggests a majority of Kupersmith’s guidelines remain applicable to today’s online environment, with some adjustments related to technology advances. We propose an additional guideline that acknowledges the role non-library websites play in guiding how users interact with library terminology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The learning quality of humans depends on the sense of contemplation. Textual documents are a huge part of the literature on contemplation which effortlessly creates perception. Automatic document class identification or organisation is a machine learning function to understand the psychological and emotional content of the text in a concise way. The problem of identification of documents falls in the field of library science, information science and artificial intelligence. The research progress of class identification of documents has been made in various most spoken languages. Numerous research works have been published in European and Asian languages. However, there is a gap in the literature when it comes to any less resource language, especially Bengali. Consequently, this work portrays an efficient topic modelling approach for Bengali document class identification. It proposes a Dirichlet-polynomial clustering model likelihood corpus distribution (LCD), which is based on a Bayesian numerical prototype. Experiments are done to prove the efficiency of LCD over various topic modelling algorithms, such as latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA), LDA with bag-of-words (LDA-BOW), latent semantic indexing (LSI), and hierarchical Dirichlet process (HDP). For performance evaluation, we considered five real-world datasets of Bengali corpora, such as science, sports, computer, season, and epic in this work. The coherence score of different modelling algorithms is compared to find the best model for each dataset separately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present research was conducted to measure the impact of organizational maturity on the main variables of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology among library and information science experts in the public libraries in Mashhad. It is applied research in terms of purpose and correlation-descriptive research in terms of the data collection method. The research statistical population included all library and information science experts in Mashhad city, which were selected as research samples using random sampling. The questionnaire was used as a data collection tool. The average variance extracted (AVE) was used to assess the validity of the questionnaire, and the composite reliability (CR) coefficient and Cronbach's alpha coefficient were used to assess the reliability of the questionnaire. The structural equation modeling method (partial least squares method) was used with Smart PLS software to test the research hypotheses and the research conceptual model. According to the results, it can be stated that the variable of organizational maturity has a significant and positive effect on the components of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology, including performance expectancy, facilitating conditions, social influence, purposeful behavior, but this variable does not have a significant and positive effect on the effort expectancy. Organizational maturity affects the acceptance and use of technology by public library librarians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses themes that emerged from open forums hosted by the Medical Library Association's Vision 2048 Task Force from 2021 to 2023. Topics discussed include the importance of focusing on the needs of communities served by health information professionals, the recruitment of the next generation of health science librarians, and the use of data and artificial intelligence tools in library collections.

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OBJECTIVE: Many health sciences librarians enter the profession without specific health sciences training. Some LIS programs have health sciences courses or tracks, but health sciences training within an LIS program is only one path to entering health sciences librarianship. To develop a map of pathways into health sciences librarianship, an immersion session at the Medical Library Association conference in 2022 asked health sciences librarians to share how they entered the profession. METHODS: The immersion session was structured in three parts: facilitator introductions, small group discussions, and a whole group summary discussion. Guided by questions from the facilitators, small groups discussed what pathways currently exist, how to promote existing pathways, what new pathways should be created, and how to develop and promote pathways that make the profession more equitable, diverse, and inclusive. RESULTS: Through in-the-moment thematic analysis of the small group discussions, the following emerged as key pathways: library school education; internships and practica; the Library and Information Science (LIS) pipeline; on-thejob training; mentoring; self-teaching/hands-on learning; and continuing education. Themes of equity, diversity, and inclusion arose throughout the session, especially in the concluding whole group discussion. CONCLUSION: Small group discussions in a conference immersion session showed the value of community building in a profession that has multiple pathways for entrance, highlighting the importance of unearthing hidden knowledge about avenues for exploring and enhancing career pathways. The article seeks to address barriers to entry into the profession and adds to the literature on strengthening the field of health sciences librarianship.

Throughout history, human beings have developed a variety of strategies to traverse the enormous knowledge space and locate specific information. Taking metaphorical use of space as a means of conceptualizing information, namely where numerous information reside could be regarded as a vast space, and the trail navigating through the space to find information could be seen as an information path. The referenceable order or structure within information space is crucial in the process of information revisiting. From oral culture, written culture to bits culture, the research intends as a review of diverse methods of information organization, storage and retrieval developed in Western civilization. By looking at representative knowledge management systems in the three cultures, the discussion would be approached from the perspectives of mnemotechnics, library science and computer science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People with disabilities face daily barriers arising from the physical, material, or social environment in which they live. In order to make such an environment fully inclusive, accessibility must be guaranteed, the necessary adaptations must be made, and the abilities of each individual must be recognised. This article shows the results of a research carried out with the aim of checking whether libraries are responding to the needs of users with disabilities. It analyses the scientific production in this field over the last fifty years related to accessibility and inclusion initiatives aimed at guaranteeing access to information for people with disabilities according to the type of disability. This analysis is based on a systematic review of the use of the concepts of "accessibility" and "inclusion" related to "library" in the scientific production in the field of Library and Information Science in the databases of Web of Science, Scopus and Library Science Database, aiming to study the attention paid to people with disabilities and, in particular, to people with hearing disability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The editorial article of the magazine "Information, Culture and Society" celebrates its 50th edition, highlighting its commitment to quality and academic relevance. For 25 years, the magazine has been a space for interdisciplinary exchange in the field of Library Science and Information Sciences. Open access to publications is emphasized, which democratizes access to scientific and technical information. In addition, contributions are presented on topics such as digital preservation in Colombia, electronic documentation management, and local cultural policy in the Barcelona Library network, among others. [Extracted from the article]

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to identify and extract the professional competencies of the librarians of Iran's public libraries, and to determine the importance of each of them in order to prioritize and rank them. Method: This research is an applied study employing a mixed research methodology. The study divided in two distinct stage. In the initial phase, a purposive selection of 61 Persian and English articles was analyzed using the meta-synthesis method. Then 104 codes were extracted using experts' opinions, and the validity of these codes was confirmed through their content validity and their reliability was measured and confirmed with Cohen's Kappa test. During the quantitative stage, each factor was ranked by distributing the questionnaire among 62 experts and using Shannon's entropy method. Findings: This research reveals a pioneering exploration into the professional competencies of librarians in Iran's public libraries, resulting in the identification of four crucial factors, 10 main components, and an extensive 72 sub-components that categorize these competencies. The 'Ability' factor, consisting of specialized ability and thinking ability, emerges as a cornerstone with conceptualizations across 9 sub-components. The 'Feature' factor, consisting of occupational and behavioral characteristics, was conceptualized by 19 sub-components. The 'Skills' factor, including managerial, social, occupational, and technological skills, was conceptualized by 32 sub-components. Lastly, the 'Knowledge' factor, comprising knowledge related to society and specialized knowledge, was conceptualized by 12 sub-components. Quantitative analysis, using the innovative Shannon entropy method, provides a nuanced understanding of the significance attached to each competency. The results of this analysis shows that 'knowledge' holds the highest weight (0/2575), establishing it as the most critical competency for librarians in Iran's public libraries. Following closely, the 'Skill' factor secures the second position with a weight of 0/2545. 'Ability' and 'Characteristics' factors, with weights of 0.2498 and 0.2382, respectively, are ranked third and fourth. Originality/value: This research stands out in its original contribution to the field of library science by systematically identifying and prioritizing the professional competencies of librarians in Iran's public libraries. The comprehensive validation process, including content validity and reliability assessments, ensures the robustness of the identified competencies. The emphasis on specialized ability, thinking ability, occupational and behavioral characteristics, managerial, social, occupational, and technological skills, as well as knowledge related to society and specialized knowledge, shows a nuanced understanding of the multifaceted nature of librarianship. In summary, this research breaks new ground in the systematic exploration, categorization, and prioritization of professional competencies, offering a valuable framework for improving the competencies of librarians in the unique context of Iranian public libraries. These findings not only contribute to the academic understanding of librarianship but also offer practical insights for enhancing the proficiency of librarians in this context. Furthermore, the nuanced categorization and prioritization presented in this research provide a valuable framework for the ongoing development of professional competencies and qualifications in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teaching literature review skills in social work research course often utilises a one-shot instruction session such as a guest speaker from the library or a visit to the library. However, this model is not practical for students in asynchronous online courses. While it has become common for research courses to include assistance from libraries through one-shot instruction sessions, the effectiveness of such assistance, whether in the one-shot model or through embedded librarianship, has not been studied or shared in the social work education literature. This teaching note shares our experiences and lessons learned from an online undergraduate social work research course that adopted embedded librarianship. The collaboration with the librarian through the embedded librarianship had a noticeable impact on the quality of student assignments in the research course. As online education continues to grow rapidly in social work, embedded librarianship through technology presents a promising tool to help social work students become familiar with literature search and library resources through learning by doing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the advances of the macro stage of the ongoing Curricular Innovation Project of the undergraduate programs of the Escuela Interamericana de Bibliotecología at the Universidad de Antioquia, Colombia. This project aims to build a curricular proposal that articulates in different dimensions, epistemological-theoretical, pedagogical, didactic, curricular, and administrative, the undergraduate programs in Archiving and Library Science, based on the participation of its key actors, the analysis of the context, and the institutional stamp. Methodologically, tension analysis was used, seeking to make a critical, situated, and historical reading of the theoretical, epistemological, and trend approaches, in order to maintain a balance between labor and social requirements with respect to vocations and institutional traditions. The advances are presented in terms of statements that guide the conception and institutional curricular action, and account for four central issues: the agreements of the articulating and specific objects of study, the identification and analysis of contemporary trends, the definition of graduation profiles, and the configuration of the pedagogical horizon. In the end, some recommendations are put forward to continue encouraging the journey, which can be synthesized into three issues: achieving articulation with the meso and micro curricular stages, advancing in the consolidation of the methodological memory of the project, and proposing administrative alternatives to face curricular innovation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Profound changes due to Open-Access (OA) publications lead to organizational changes in universities and libraries. This study examines Israeli librarians' perceptions regarding their role and the academic library's role in promoting OA-publications, including the barriers, challenges, needs, and requirements necessary to promote OA publishing. Lack of a budget for OA-agreements, no cooperation from university management, and researchers' unfamiliarity with OA were among the most prominent barriers. Librarians see great importance in their role of advising researchers regarding OA. However, they insist on a regulated OA-policy at the national and institutional levels to strengthen their status as change-leaders of the OA-movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The time and resources required to prepare archival collections for use by researchers is a source of constant frustration in archives and libraries. Almost always, aspirations and collections exceed limited resources. The last fifteen to twenty years have seen archivists and librarians putting great effort into increasing standardization and efficiency. However, there are few examples of applying techniques from other fields that are proven to increase productivity. This dual case study shows that applying Lean techniques, which were originally developed for automobile manufacturing, yields significant results: measurable reductions in processing time and resource use; increased adherence to standards; increased engagement in and willingness to change by staff; effective coordination across departments; and increased ability to meet the needs of stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information design--incorporating research in graphic design, typography, visualization, and usability--is a user experience practice directly applicable to contemporary museums, libraries, and archives. Information design principles and guidelines improve engagement at every point of service, effectively and efficiently complementing the mission of knowledge organizations. This historical survey explores information design in the context of contemporary user experience design, and provides an overview of information design principles and guidelines developed over 40 years of research and professional application. Applying elements of information design to archival finding aids enhances usability, while also preserving descriptive and contextual structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an account of the making of KBLab, the data lab at the National Library of Sweden (KB). The first part discusses the work involved in establishing a lab as both a physical and a digital site for researchers to use digital collections at previously unimaginable scales. The second part explains how the lab has deployed the library's collections as data to produce high quality Swedish AI models, which constitute a significant new form of digital research infrastructure. We situate this work in the context of uneven AI coverage for smaller languages, and consider how the lab's models have contributed to the making of important AI infrastructure for the Swedish language. The conclusion raises the possibilities and challenges involved in continuing this type of library-based AI development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seeking to better understand the longitudinal association between online usage of library-licensed content and short- and long-term student performance, we linked EZproxy logs to institutional university data to study how library usage impacts semester and cumulative GPAs. Panel linear mixed effects regression models indicate online library usage is significantly associated with both semester and cumulative GPAs. The library usage effect is larger for semester GPA, and varies by on- and off-campus residency. The effect on semester GPA is larger for off-campus students, while for cumulative GPA the effect is larger for on-campus students. Longitudinally linked library-institutional data offers key insights on the library's value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]