A survey concerning perceptions of academic librarians was conducted at a large, 4-year university with three populations: librarians, faculty, and undergraduate students. The high response rate and the use of an instrument based on previous studies offers the possibility of longitudinal comparison and the identification of relationships between groups within one environment. Results will be presented in a series of articles, beginning with this paper's study introduction and literature review of librarian, faculty, and student perceptions of librarians. Subsequent papers will present results from the three surveys and offer analysis across the three groups. The literature review focused on research studies of U.S. and Canadian academic libraries since 2000 with relevance to these major research questions: perceptions about what librarians know (expertise and skills), what librarians do (role and duties), and what librarians are like (motivations and affective behaviours). Librarians' perceptions of themselves as critically important yet underappreciated seem to have persisted, perhaps because they are the only group to see the university-wide scope of their jobs, whereas, non-librarian faculty and students have a more limited views of the profession. In contrast to previous studies, recent literature suggests that course-integrated information literacy (IL) instruction has increased the visibility of librarians as educators to both faculty and students. The influence of popular media on students' perceptions seems less powerful, opening the door wider for library marketing and branding programs.
A survey concerning perceptions of academic librarians was conducted at a large, 4-year university with three populations: librarians, faculty, and undergraduate students. The high response rate and the use of an instrument based on previous studies offers the possibility of longitudinal comparison and the identification of relationships between groups within one environment. This article focuses specifically on academic librarian perceptions about what librarians know (expertise and skills), what librarians do (roles and duties), and what librarians are like (motivations and affective behaviors). Twenty librarians employed in James Madison University Libraries responded to an online survey (62.5% response rate); four follow-up interviews and card sorts were conducted later to provide context to the data. Results have implications for libraries specifically in the areas of outreach, instruction, management, and collaboration. Differences in the responses of liaison and nonliaison groups are not generalizable to the population, but patterns were found that suggest future research in this area should include examination of differences related to the type of librarianship or focus on specific aspects of librarianship. Subsequent articles will situate these findings with those from surveys of faculty and undergraduate students and discuss implications for practice.
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