Current Issue: May 2022
Feature
Bonanni and Sullivan
Making a case for Zotero
Embedded courses, collaboration, and resources sharing
Zotero has been one of the preferred citation tools students use for research. The Arizona State University (ASU) Library instructs undergraduates and graduate students on using this tool. Recently, the ASU Library has had librarians ...
Feature
Brown and Pierce
2020 ACRL Academic Library Trends and Statistics Survey
Highlights and key EDI findings
The annual ACRL Academic Library Trends and Statistics Survey is the largest of its kind and offers the most comprehensive picture of academic library budgets, staffing, teaching, services, collections, and more. The data facilitates ...
Feature
Squibb and Salmon
Pick and choose
Offering options to expand library sessions for undergraduate researchers
For a number of years, librarians at the University of California-Merced (UC-Merced) have provided research-focused instruction during a weeklong training bootcamp for undergraduate students participating ...
The Way I See It
Rachel Hammer
Library anxiety and librarian humor
How to find Nessie
Library anxiety strikes even the most competent of students. While often discussed in the context of library orientation, library anxiety (a term coined by Constance Mellon) also relates to information literacy instruction. Communication between students and librarians forms the crux of instruction and an increase in comfort with the library. Robert Perret, reference and instruction librarian and first-year experience librarian at the University of Idaho, suggests that humor may play a role in this reduction of anxiety. While Perret acknowledges that future research could investigate this idea in more detail, his study did find that most librarians integrate humor ...
Feature
Marna Hostetler
Better by design
Making meetings more productive
All libraries have meetings, but not all meetings are productive. Unproductive meetings are viewed as a waste of time, resulting in low morale and lack of progress on organizational goals. But meetings are crucial to setting goals, formulating policies, removing barriers, and completing projects. Since meetings are a necessity, how can we make them better?
I am the library director at a regional comprehensive public university, and I recently completed a Master of Business Administration degree with a concentration in Human Resources. One of the management courses I took covered the topic of meetings ...
International Insights
Chu and Raju
Academic and research librarians engaging a global mindset
From awareness to action
Five years ago, the first C&RL News International Insights column was published in response to the question raised during the Research Forum at ACRL 2015, What can ACRL do to highlight research and practice that provides an international and/or comparative understanding of issues that affect academic and research libraries? As the current column coeditors, who end our stewardship of the quarterly column this issue, our goal has been to provide a global perspective on issues relevant to academic and research libraries, and offer ideas and opportunities for action. Thus, we wish to conclude our editorship with a focus ...