Robin Chin Roemer and Rachel Borchardt

Altmetrics, Bibliometrics

September 15, 2015

For practical purposes, the best-known definition of altmetrics, “the creation and study of new metrics based on the Social Web for analyzing and informing scholarship,” comes from altmetrics.org, a website set up by Priem and three of his colleagues. Since then, others have questioned the definition and the methods of calculating alt­metrics in various scholarly … Continue reading Altmetrics, Bibliometrics


Open Access graphic

Open Access Publishing

September 8, 2015

“I really believe open access is not a passing fad,” Mary Ellen Davis, executive director of ALA’s Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) division, told an open-access panel at the American Historical Association’s 2014 annual meeting. “I believe open access is a durable feature of the landscape of scholarly communication.” ACRL made its scholarly … Continue reading Open Access Publishing


Tulane University Special Collections

The “Landmark Undertaking” of the Tulane Libraries Recovery Center

August 27, 2015

This post is the sixth of a six-part series commemorating libraries and librarians 10 years after Hurricane Katrina. Yet Howard-Tilton reopened the same day classes resumed at Tulane in January 2006. “It was a little rocky that first semester,” says Corrigan. “The first day we brought staff back we had a glitch and didn’t have power … Continue reading The “Landmark Undertaking” of the Tulane Libraries Recovery Center


EPA librarians and interns. Front, from left: Jane Bethel, Jessica Dixon, Lisa Becksford, Anna Loewenthal, Ebony McDonald, library director Susan Forbes. Back, from left: Catherine Field, Aurora Cobb, Jessica Yankowski, Eric Brownell, and Anthony Holderied.

Forty Years of Interns—UNC-Chapel Hill

June 19, 2015

“I had so little experience in ­libraries before I went to library school,” she says. “So I was especially keen to get some real-world experience.” Lucky for her, there was a library—the Environmental Protection Agency Research Triangle Park (EPA-RTP) Library—that would offer Lamoureux an internship with that real-world experience she was craving. The internship, she … Continue reading Forty Years of Interns—UNC-Chapel Hill


2015 Library Systems Report

Library Systems Report

May 1, 2015

Tied to the economy of libraries, the vendors that make up the library technology industry support a stable but highly constrained economic sector, with global opportunities. Library budgets may never recover to pre-recession levels, fueling interest in technology to improve their efficiency and the impact of collection resources. Products able to deliver efficiency, innovation, and … Continue reading Library Systems Report



Lawrence Lessig

Lawrence Lessig Wraps Up ACRL 2015 in Portland

March 29, 2015

Lessig spoke on three themes: the impact of a few big givers to political campaigns and how that corrupts the political process, net neutrality, and open access. He called all of these themes an “equality fight” that librarians should embrace as part of their profession. Lessig compared the current political campaign fundraising and process to … Continue reading Lawrence Lessig Wraps Up ACRL 2015 in Portland


Safiya Umoja Noble

ACRL 2015 in Portland: Sunny Skies, Serious Conversation

March 28, 2015

Safiya Umoja Noble, assistant professor in the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, talked about how search-engine bias affects women and girls negatively in her presentation, “Searching for Girls: Identity for Sale in the Age of Google.” “What I’m asking us to think about today is: What does it cost us more broadly … Continue reading ACRL 2015 in Portland: Sunny Skies, Serious Conversation


G. Willow Wilson at the ACRL 2015 conference

ACRL 2015 Conference Record Opening

March 26, 2015

G. Willow Wilson, creator of the Ms. Marvel comic series starring a Muslim superhero named Kamala Khan, headlined the opening session. A prize-winning fantasy author and journalist, Wilson is an American convert to Islam who has lived in both the US and Egypt. Wilson said she initially figured the Ms. Marvel series would run no … Continue reading ACRL 2015 Conference Record Opening


A Career of Our Own

A Career of Our Own

March 9, 2015

The second-wave feminism movement from the mid-20th century opened doors for women in educational and career advancement, particularly in academia, thanks in large part to Title IX legislation that prohibited discrimination at higher educational institutions. In 1972, the year Title IX was implemented, women held only 4.6% of high-level administrative positions at research libraries. By … Continue reading A Career of Our Own


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Rolling the Dice in an Academic Library

December 1, 2014

Admittedly, that last event may not be a traditional academic library service. But at Briggs, we’ve supplemented those traditional services by staying open until late in the evening one Friday every month to offer students the chance to unwind at Game Night @ Briggs Library. During Game Night, students can set aside their papers and … Continue reading Rolling the Dice in an Academic Library


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Winning the Space Race

September 23, 2014

Still, the books keep coming: Even with increasing numbers of e-journals and ebooks, US college and university libraries collect more than 25 million print volumes every year, on top of the more than 1.1 billion print items already held, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics’ Academic Libraries 2004. Where are these books getting shelved? … Continue reading Winning the Space Race