A US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released in December 2018 reviewed 22 studies estimating that more than 30% of college students face food insecurity amid the rising costs of higher education. The report estimates that there are nearly 2 million at-risk students—most often they are first-generation college students, low income, or single parents. A … Continue reading Food for Thought
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, for instance, hosts Connections4Health, a program in which college student volunteers refer patrons to health resources, including those that address food insecurity, transportation, housing, and immigration concerns. In Ithaca, New York, Tompkins County Public Library teams up with Cornell University and Ithaca College for Ballet and Books, in which college students … Continue reading Exercise Your Resources
In education Digital badges encourage students to cultivate and showcase granular skills beyond their report cards and prepare them for the workplace. In Teaching with Digital Badges: Best Practices for Libraries (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018), contributing author Amanda Rose Fuller details a workforce-readiness digital badge initiative developed at Aurora (Colo.) Public Schools. This program, designed … Continue reading Digital Badges
Emily L. Mross, business librarian at Penn State Harrisburg (PSH), defined a research party as a venue where students can drop in and talk informally about problems they are facing with their assignments, ranging from finding the best materials to figuring out how to cite sources in American Psychological Association style. “Basically, you give them … Continue reading Plan a Research Party
In 2017 we started the “Copyright for Creators” series aimed at graduate and undergraduate students and faculty in arts disciplines, as well as creators throughout the university, such as web designers and communicators. Like most VCU Libraries events, this series was free and open to the public, and the topics covered were relevant to this … Continue reading Copyright for Creators
Martin’s relationship with Texas A&M began in the 1970s, when he first visited AggieCon, a science fiction and fantasy convention held at the university, says Jeremy Brett (right), curator of the library’s Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Collection. In 1993, Martin began shipping items to the archives, which now include more than 50,000 pieces. The … Continue reading Bookend: An Archive of Ice and Fire
With the goal of reconciliation and justice, institutions across the US are increasingly undertaking formal measures to review who they’ve memorialized—evaluating names of buildings and monuments to determine connections to white supremacy and other forms of discrimination. Unsurprisingly, university librarians and archivists are finding a role in these discussions, providing historical materials on the buildings … Continue reading What’s in a Building Name?
Steves will appear as an Auditorium Speaker at the American Library Association’s 2019 Midwinter Meeting in Seattle on January 27 to talk about the third edition of his book, Travel as a Political Act (Hachette Book Group, 2018). This month he releases Rick Steves Classroom Europe, a searchable resource of video clips that he hopes … Continue reading Newsmaker: Rick Steves
In the last two years, Penn State University Libraries has seen rapid adoption of its information literacy microcredentials among students. Microcredentials—transferable forms of metadata-encoded, performance-based educational credits—are not new; they started gaining traction in academic libraries around 2012. What is different at Penn State is that to help manage the sudden volume of badge submissions, … Continue reading The Making of a Microcredential
Karna Younger, faculty engagement librarian at Kansas University Libraries, says the idea of research sprints—during which faculty and librarians work together for about a week on the same project, and, more importantly, in the same space—is not a wholly new idea. But the approach is being formalized into a method that can be replicated. “It … Continue reading Academic Speed Trials
Many people with disabilities challenge these attitudes and advocate for change. They point out that cultural attitudes often create more difficulties for them than the disability itself. Despite their efforts, stereotypes persist—even in the workplace. I recently surveyed 288 librarians, interviewing 10 who identified as having a disability, about their experiences working at academic libraries … Continue reading Disability and Equity
“Who’s collecting San Diego’s beer history?” This question—asked by Char Booth, California State University San Marcos (CSUSM) Library associate dean, during a brewing science certificate proposal review in 2016—launched what would become the Brewchive at CSUSM Library. In 2018, the archive received the American Library Association’s John Cotton Dana Library Public Relations Award. With the … Continue reading Tapping into Beer History
