Category Archives for User Services & Engagement
Liaisons as Sales Force: Using Sales Techniques to Engage Academic Library Users
Liaison librarians are assuming a wide variety of new roles that serve their institutions’ students, staff, and faculty. An essential foundation of these new roles is the ability to engage with the liaison’s user community. These engagement skills are not … Continue reading
Collaboration and Academic Libraries: An Overview and Literature Review
The chapter provides an overview and an extensive literature review of collaboration and academic libraries. There is consideration of different aspects of internal collaboration including: collaboration within the library service; collaboration of academic libraries with faculties, other support departments, and … Continue reading
How Can the University Library Better Meet the Information Needs of Research Students? Experiences From Ulster University
This article investigates academic library needs of doctoral students. The study identifies PhD students’ information literacy training needs and explores current levels of library engagement, barriers to use, and gaps in existing services. First-year PhD students at Ulster University (UU) … Continue reading
Making It Work for Everyone: An Evolving Reference Service
At an academic health science center, librarians identified problems, weaknesses, and strengths in reference services. The on-call reference schedule was discontinued and a question flowchart was developed for circulation staff. Only research questions were referred to librarians, who would respond … Continue reading
Mapping the future of academic libraries
The report highlights a number of challenges and opportunities for SCONUL members, including the development of AI and machine learning, datafied scholarship and the on-going challenges of blurred boundaries between the library and the rest of the institutions and the … Continue reading
The Book Stop pop-up library project
The Book Stop Project is a design concept offering a huge potential for community libraries to evolve from monolithic buildings to activated public spaces. Read More
Libraries Look to Big Data to Measure Their Worth—And Better Help Students
These days, though, libraries are finding new ways to measure their worth. They’re counting how many times students use electronic library resources or visit in person, and comparing that to how well the students do in their classes and how … Continue reading
Measures of Change in Academic Library Behavior
New strategies and practices are required given the changes technology has brought to higher education and scholarly communication. Many libraries are implementing these strategies and practices, but it is difficult to move often long-established ways of doing things and to … Continue reading
Predicting the Role of Library Bookshelves in 2025
The Utrecht University Library case study invites librarians to fundamentally rethink how they could strengthen the function of open shelves in their library. Based on acquisition and user data, and on interviews with publishers and users, this article suggests that … Continue reading
Research Library Issues, no. 291 (2017): Holistic Librarianship
While not a new topic, many conversations are occurring about the roles of library staff and the changing nature of their work in support of research, teaching, and learning. Boundaries between specific functions or departments within the library continue to … Continue reading