To sustain integration of information literacy into the university curriculum, librarians and faculty need to investigate theories of change. This chapter examines change agency theory as both a planning tool and an implementation process for integrating information literacy into the general education curriculum at CSULB.
Since the wide-scale adoption of the ACRL Information Literacy Standards (2000), there have been numerous students who have graduated from universities that have formal library instruction programs. Currently there has been very little assessment of their post-graduate research skills or what role information literacy plays on workplace performance. [...]
With the growing size of academic library Web sites, constant updating, authentication issues, and organization are increasingly difficult for libraries to maintain user-friendly sites. This usability study examines how students use electronic research libraries such as Questia, which has been designed to replace traditional libraries and compare it with large university library Web sites. Students were asked to perform tasks at two electronic research library sites and then at two large university library Web sites. Major implications of this study are that design features incorporated by Web site designers can drastically affect the success of students doing research. nyone who has worked in an academic library over the past few years has agonized over the library home page and how best to present library resources to students. Professional Web designers have developed guidelines that work well for companies that have robust resources to implement extensive user studies and to hire specialists. However, for most librarians, the Web design principles and access to digital resources are still the "librarians know best model," where users are expected to know how information is organized and to know the meaning of library terminology. The "librarians know best model" is advantageous only for the library with a limited amount of digital resources that can be attractively organized and displayed and easy to understand. Yet, many times, libraries acquire more and more electronic and digital databases and products, which makes constant updating, authentication issues, and organization, while keeping things user friendly, a constant challenge.To answer this challenge, a new generation of one-stop electronic research libraries is cropping up with direct marketing designed to cut out libraries completely and target university students. Do these for-profit research centers provide students easier access to online materials? Do these sites entice students to use their resources more readily than do library home pages? That is the question this article addresses.
As smartphone ownership rises, usage patterns are expanding. Libraries face an increasing demand for online content delivered in a mobile compatible format while being constrained by financial and staffing limitations. Solutions are readily available through free and low‐cost products to create mobile web pages and existing design models from which to draw inspiration. Platform‐specific apps can easily support the kinds of content most commonly delivered on library mobile pages: basic contact information and outbound links to the catalog, databases, and other resources. Two software platforms for creating simple pages were tested, the free software from WordPress with mobile detection formatting enabled and LibGuides' mobile friendly platform in a basic version, free for those with LibGuides accounts, and the more feature‐rich MobileBuilder version. Each was found to have advantages and weaknesses. Whichever platform is chosen, usability testing is critical. The authors offer a “Heuristic Checklist for Library Mobile Design,” detailing aspects of interface design, user characteristics, and content delivery that should be assessed to determine how well the platform serves a library's requirements for mobile usability.
Libraries remain one of the last places on campus where the purging of usage data is encouraged and "tracking" is a dirty word. While some libraries have demonstrated the usefulness of analytics, opponents bring up issues of privacy and debate the feasibility of student-generated library data for planning and assessment. Using a study conducted at the University Library, California State University, Long Beach, the authors of this article identified practical knowledge of data research that academic librarians will benefit from understanding. Readers will learn about the role campus culture plays in data gathering, be exposed to the complexities of learning analytics and Institutional Review Board (IRB) clearance, and read how the authors weighed the ethical use of big data analysis for assessing students.
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