This poster reflects on the Association of Research Libraries’ (ARL) upcoming inaugural week-long Digital Scholarship Institute for library professionals. Held in June 2017 at Boston College, the Institute introduced librarians and staff who are not currently involved in digital scholarship to the methodologies and considerations of such work. T…[Read more]

This checklist is an offering to the digital humanities community by participants of the Digital Humanities 2017 panel “Copyright, Digital Humanities, and Global Geographies of Knowledge.”* Do you have suggestions for improving it? Please email vzafrin at bu edu. *ht…[Read more]

Makerspaces – workshops openly accessible to the public, where people can create objects or learn about making – are a much talked about subject within the library world. An increasing number of public libraries, as well as school and academic libraries, are establishing, or planning to establish makerspaces within their institutions. Many ent…[Read more]

The Great Parchment Book of the Honourable the Irish Society is a major surviving historical record of the estates of the county of Londonderry (in modern day Northern Ireland). It contains key data about landholding and population in the Irish province of Ulster and the city of Londonderry and its environs in the mid-17th century, at a time of…[Read more]

The Great Parchment Book of the Honourable the Irish Society is a major surviving historical record of the estates of the county of Londonderry (in modern day Northern Ireland). It contains key data about landholding and population in the Irish province of Ulster and the city of Londonderry and its environs in the mid-17th century, at a time of…[Read more]

While we may know well what personal fitness means, the concept
of a fit library is ambiguous. Is it simply a matter of paying attention
to the numbers, not unlike observing metrics such as the Body Mass
Index? Does an increase in circulation or the delivery of more
instruction sessions point to a fit library? Achieving library fitness is
a…[Read more]

Academic libraries are supposed to be places of silence and deep study. Tell that to the students watching a video, talking on cell phones or working on a group assignment. Today’s academic libraries need to accommodate students’ desires for quiet and socialization. This essay offers recommendations for noise management in academic libraries.

The purpose of this paper is to share a classroom teaching technique and pedagogical
style that can alleviate difficulties encountered during information literacy instruction sessions when
students think they already know everything the librarian instructor plans to cover in the session.
Ignoring this situation can result in a poor teaching and…[Read more]

Textbook affordability is a critical issue in higher education. Academic librarians have responded by creating programs to encourage faculty to become aware of the cost of textbooks and using open educational resources as an alternative. Another, less obvious reason to start a campus textbook affordability initiative is to establish a culture of…[Read more]

Librarians have been consciously adopting metaphors to describe library concepts since the nineteenth century, helping us to structure our understanding of new technologies. As a profession, we have drawn extensively on these figurative frameworks to explore issues surrounding the digital library, yet very little has been written to date which…[Read more]

We suggest a new approach to information literacy for students: let faculty do it. Let librarians concentrate less on educating students directly and more time helping non-librarian faculty to integrate information literacy skill building into their courses, and developing the tools and resources to simplify their ability to achieve that…[Read more]

As libraries increasingly store books in off-site storage facilities or on-site automated retrieval systems, there is less capacity for library users to browse stack collections. This reduces the possibility for serendipitous discovery of books, or what the author refers to as a “collision with the collection”. This article discusses why this is…[Read more]

In this new era of experimentation in higher education, administrators should look to the academic library to adopt the same spirit of experimentation. Library and academic administrators will want to examine how they can collaboratively develop a new culture of experimentation to take risks, achieve new successes and occasional failures. This…[Read more]

As gatekeepers and content buyers, academic librarians carve out only a limited higher education role – making information accessible – for themselves. Our future depends on our ability to differentiate what libraries offer and what library workers bring to their communities. This article lays out an alternate vision for the library profession -…[Read more]

In a world where openness is increasingly a desired quality of higher education, academic and research libraries should strive to be open to non-student/non-faculty members of the surrounding community that could benefit from library resources, primarily access to computers and the Internet. This essay explores the potential benefits and…[Read more]

At one time faculty rarely had much good to say about Wikipedia and typically warned their students not to use it for research. Academic librarians are visibly involved in changing the say Wikipedia is perceived on their campuses. This essay explores ways in which Wikipedia is being used to promote writing and research skills.

In this update to our original article we share those most recent developments, which to our way of thinking generate high enthusiasm for even greater progress towards higher education’s transition to a culture of openness. We offer suggestions for how to spread the development of open educational resource (OER) initiatives.

There is often an assumption that academic libraries and bookstores are adversaries around the development of textbook affordability projects. This article shares the results of a survey on library-bookstore relationships and suggests that the two organizations have a shared interest in student success upon which a productive relationship can be built.

Concert programmes are an increasingly important source to those studying the history of musical performance and concert life, providing rich sociological and musicological context. Though there are currently projects in place to improve access to these vital documents, the arrangement of programmes has so far escaped in-depth study. Therefore…[Read more]

A review of the original Sims game and how fans are attempting to preserve the game and its assets through digital archives and other participatory practices. Written for the Intensive: Cult Media Review section of Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media.