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46, no. 3

Academic Libraries and Extracurricular Reading Promotion

Jan 5th, 2008
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Barry Trott, Editor
Julie Elliott, Guest Columnist

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It is clear to anyone in the library profession, and certainly to readers of this column, that readers’ advisory (RA) services have become an important part of libraries. While librarians have worked to connect readers and books throughout the history of libraries, the past eighteen years since the publication of Joyce Saricks’s Readers’ Advisory Service in the Public Library (ALA, 1989, 1997, 2005) have seen a blossoming of RA tools for thoughtful discussion of techniques for working with readers, (more…)

Data Services in Academic Libraries: Assessing Needs and Promoting Services

Jan 5th, 2008
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Eleanor J. Read

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Academic libraries play an important role in making numeric data collections available to their researchers and providing assistance in identifying and accessing appropriate resources. The University of Tennessee Libraries have been working to strengthen the numeric data component of their reference services and have expanded promotion and outreach activities to make this specialized service more visible. In fall 2003, the Data Services Awareness and Use Survey was conducted to learn more about the university’s users of research data and assess their awareness of the service and the effectiveness of promotional activities. Results of the survey are being used to plan, promote, and provide data services. The survey portion of this manuscript was presented, in part, at the International Association for Social Science Information Service and Technology Conference on May 26, 2004 in Madison, Wisconsin. (more…)

ALA-APA Support Staff Certification: RUSA’s Role

Jan 5th, 2008
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Diana D. Shonrock, President

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As I put pen to paper to write this column (yes sometimes the ideas still start that way for me), the ghosts and goblins are at the door. Perhaps that’s not such a strange metaphor for this column because the idea of support staff certification is one that, like Halloween ghosts, has visited the American Library Association (ALA) in the past, only to disappear from view again and again. ALA has been discussing a certification program for library support staff for more than twenty years. (more…)

The Digital Reference Electronic Warehouse Project: Creating the Infrastructure for Digital Reference Research through a Multidisciplinary Knowledge Base

Jan 5th, 2008
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Scott Nicholson and R. David Lankes

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One of the valuable offerings of librarians in the digital age is the human intermediation of information needs. In physical libraries, these reference questions are answered, and few artifacts remain from the transaction; therefore, the knowledge created through the work of the librarian leaves with the patron. Due to the medium of communication, digital reference transactions capture the knowledge of information professionals. There are hundreds of digital reference services generating knowledge every day; however, the lack of a schema for archiving reference transactions from multiple services makes it difficult to create a fielded, searchable knowledge base. (more…)

Providing Reference Service in Our Sleep: Using a FAQ Database to Guide Users to the Right Sources

Jan 5th, 2008
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Judith M. Nixon, Editor
Karen Anello and Brett Bonfield, Guest Columnists

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This is my first column as the editor of the new Management column. I am heartily in favor of a column on managing reference and user services departments. In my career as a librarian, I have managed collections ranging from as small as a popular books collection in a public library to the largest library at Purdue University. (more…)

Information Literacy and IT Fluency: Convergences and Divergences

Jan 5th, 2008
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Lori Arp and Beth S. Woodard, Editors
Craig Gibson, Guest Columnist

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Academic librarians are currently challenged by a variety of nomenclature issues, nowhere more evident than in the expanding cluster of terms centered on concepts and processes of accessing, evaluating, and using information. This development is undoubtedly caused by the nature of library and information science itself, which is a soft applied discipline, or one without a prevailing explanatory paradigm, and with an overriding concern for application rather than pure theory. (more…)

Got Data? The Census Bureau’s State Data Center Network Reaches Out to Local Communities

Jan 5th, 2008
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Diane Zabel, Editor
Michele Hayslett, Guest Columnist

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“Let me be sure I understand you: You want to start a tearoom and bakery business, and you’d like to know the number of women living in Kansas City whose households have incomes of more than $60,000? … Okay! Yes, I can help you with that.”

So begins another reference interaction in which a librarian is asked to provide quite specific data for a business plan. Where should libraries without specialized staff turn for help? (more…)

A Midyear Progress Report

Jan 5th, 2008
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Diane Zabel

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Because I am halfway through my first year as editor, I thought RUSQ readers were due a progress report. I hope some of you noticed a redesign, beginning with the fall 2006 issue. I felt that RUSQ was due for a facelift as the journal had not been redesigned for some time. The purpose of this redesign was to incorporate suggestions made by participants in the 2005 Readex Readership Survey and the 2006 RUSQ focus groups.

Here is a summary of some of the major changes. (more…)

An Analysis of the Literature on Instruction in Academic Libraries

Jan 5th, 2008
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Gregory A. Crawford and Jessica Feldt

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This research examined the literature on instruction in academic libraries to determine the journals in which such articles were published, the types of articles, and changes in the types by year. Results show that Research Strategies, Reference Services Review, College & Research Libraries, The Journal of Academic Librarianship, and Reference & User Services Quarterly have published the most articles on academic library instruction. (more…)

Euthanasia: A Guide to Sources

Jan 5th, 2008
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Neal Wyatt, Column Editor
Kelly Myer Polacek, Guest Columnist

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Euthanasia is a topic of hot debate in social, political, legal, medical, religious, and ethical arenas. It is one of those topics that collection development librarians grapple with when striving to create authoritative, accessible, and useful collections. What are the best books, what journals are needed, and just what issues make up the debate? (more…)