Journal of Academic Librarianship最新文献

The importance of technological innovation and intellectual property planning and strategies for the development of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is evident. Faced with the complex and ever-changing information environment and the patent information needs of SMEs, this paper aims to propose the intellectual property information service (IPIS) methods for SMEs in university libraries based on the survey of patent information centers in Germany. The service mode and contents of these centers are studied from the international, national and regional levels. The advantages and characteristics for serving SMEs in these centers are summarized and the service direction was given. The IPIS methods for SMEs in university libraries are put forward from five aspects including construction of IPIS platform for SMEs, providing access to financing, entrepreneurship and rights defense, promoting the transformation to innovation-driven development, strengthening the publicity and promotion of services, and establishing service guarantee and evaluation mechanisms.

Library neutrality, often considered a core value of librarianship, has been facing growing opposition in recent years, but little research exists on how it is being defined and prioritized by practicing librarians. Normally more of a concern in public libraries, increased politicization of academic spaces is bringing the neutrality debate to college and university libraries. This article presents the results of a survey of Canadian academic librarians' attitudes towards library neutrality, including how they define, value and practice neutrality. It is found that Canadian academic librarians most commonly define neutrality as “not taking a side” and that ambivalent and negative conceptions of neutrality are prevalent. Neutrality is largely considered to be impossible and unethical, and seen as significantly less valuable than other library values such as access to information and social responsibility. The unfavourable conceptions and low value attached to neutrality are reflected in Canadian academic librarians' actions and practice. Many librarians are purposely contravening the principle of neutrality by acting in ways that they consider non-neutral, with social justice is a frequent impetus for non-neutral action.

WeChat official accounts (WCOAs) have emerged as a prevalent medium for information dissemination in Chinese academic libraries over the past decade. This study quantitatively analyzed the whole-year performance of 120 WCOAs from 117 medical college and university libraries, using the WeChat communication index (WCI) algorithm to evaluate communication power at three levels: macro-level accounts, meso-level content themes, and micro-level individual posts. The results showed that 55.6 % of the libraries have activated WCOAs, with an average annual output of 129 posts and 72 broadcasts per account. However, these accounts demonstrated a relatively low average WCI of 249.24, with a small percentage of high-impact posts. A deeper analysis reveals that reading promotion was the overarching theme, and basic library services and digital resource services were frequently highlighted with a high topic communication index. Notable concerns were also identified, including non-audience-centric posting schedules, a disproportionate focus on leisure-oriented content rather than academic support, and a scarcity of original posts. This study provides a snapshot of the developmental stages of WCOAs in Chinese academic libraries from a publication and communication perspective, and also offers pragmatic guidance for their development.

The purpose of this study was to better understand how individual research consultations (IRCs) with a librarian impact undergraduate social work students' feelings, thoughts, and actions during their information search process. Screencast videography was the primary method of data collection in this qualitative case study. Participants (n = 7) were sampled from a social work research seminar course at a regional university in the upper Midwest. Both prior to and after an IRC, study participants joined a recorded Zoom meeting with the researcher, share their screen, and talk aloud during their search process. Follow up interviews with participants were also conducted. Results showed participants' feelings moved from confused prior to the IRC to confident after the IRC. Participants had a more refined topic and were more effective in applying inclusion and exclusion criteria when selecting articles for their literature review assignment after the IRC. The actions students took after the IRC were more beneficial to their information search process, especially when it came to reading and understanding scholarly research. These results underscore the value IRCs can provide to undergraduate social work students. The findings of this study demonstrate and explain changes in student information seeking as a result of an IRC.

Librarian co-authorship of knowledge synthesis (KS) research is on the rise, demonstrating growing recognition of the value librarians bring to research teams. This study analyzes trends in KS research output at a mid-sized doctoral granting university between 2017 and 2022, with a focus on librarian involvement. Using PubMed, Scopus, and the Social Sciences Citation Index & Arts and Humanities Citation Index, all KS research published by researchers at our institution between 2017 and 2022 was retrieved. A content analysis was conducted, and findings reveal a 280 % increase in librarian co-authorship during this period, coinciding with a 54 % overall growth in KS publications. Health sciences continue to dominate as the primary creators of KS research, with <10 % of published KS published in the sciences, humanities, and social sciences. Notably, systematic reviews with librarian co-authors were published in journals with higher Journal Impact Factors (JIFs) than those without. This research underscores the vital role librarians play in advancing KS research, the importance of advocating for librarian co-authorship, and highlights the need for increased librarian engagement in non-health disciplines.

Information literacy is a crucial skill often overlooked by faculty in higher education, who expect incoming Gen Z students to have some ability to navigate the information landscape appropriately and efficiently either from prior high school instruction or simply by the ubiquity of information access. Assessments of college students' information literacy paints a different picture, indicating that information literacy instruction is required and that deliberate efforts should be made to aid students in proper evaluation and use of informational media. This study investigates the value of generalized information literacy instruction at a medium-sized, public 4-year university in a rural area. Student knowledge is assessed pre- and post-instruction to determine specific impacts of information literacy instruction on various facets of information literacy – source quality, relevance, and context. Specifically, the purpose of this research is to determine (1) whether information literacy varies across students in different fields/disciplines and (2) if so, whether generalized information literacy instruction tends to close those cross-disciplinary gaps or extend existing disparities. Data collected herein demonstrate that gains in information literacy vary substantially by academic discipline. For example, students in the College of Humanities and Fine Arts began with the second-highest average pre-instruction scores (75.00 %) and exhibited the largest gains between pre- and post-instruction assessments (+12.14 %). The results obtained in this study indicate that generalized instruction tends to inflate existing disparities in information literacy between disciplines. Based on these findings, there is ample evidence to suggest that discipline-specific information literacy instruction could provide students with larger individual gains and potentially allow information literacy to converge across fields.

This article reports on the findings of assessment tools designed to measure undergraduate students' academic engagement, psychological factors (self-regulation), factors affecting academic work, and students' evaluation of their academic success. Two assessment tools (Student Academic Engagement and Success Survey and Online Weekly Journal) were developed to explore these relationships. The Student Academic Engagement and Success Survey was distributed online to undergraduate students and the Online Weekly Journal was used to measure student engagement over an 8-week period with a subgroup of the survey participants. The use of the physical and online library emerged as the top two frequently utilized campus resources. Factors that affected students' performance related to their academic work included stress, social media, and socializing with friends. Students who perceived themselves as not meeting their academic success goals may have compensated by utilizing library resources more frequently. The findings highlight the complex dynamics of students' characteristics, academic engagement, library utilization, their ability to manage their behaviors, and various factors shaping their perception of academic success.

Academic libraries now host specialized units capable of digitally reproducing three-dimensional (3D) objects-of-study. Deployed in virtual and augmented reality, these surrogates provide the means for researchers and students to remotely experience diverse scholarly materials first-hand, though this content seldom finds its way into institutional repositories or peer-reviewed literature where it could be reused and cited. The following, then, is intended as a survey of interrelated - but administratively disparate - 3D data production, (immersive) analytics, and preservation methods, which combine to connect a range of computational processes. By illuminating the complete lifecycle of 3D data in this way, current and future practitioners – including those positioned withing more traditional library facilities and service units – can implement scalable processes that ensure the scholarly rigor of 3D contents, thereby preserving these materials as credible (i.e., FAIR) primary sources for downstream citation by researchers across disciplines.

This study investigates the ability of voice assistants and generative AI tools to respond to reference questions traditionally received by academic librarians. The authors created a sample of 25 questions based on queries received on the virtual reference service at their institution. They then created a rubric to evaluate the quality of the answers that the AI powered tools provided. The authors determined that the tools understand reference questions well and provide relevant answers but that the quality of the references provided, and the accuracy of the answers can be lacking. They suggest that more research needs to be done to understand the place of AI powered tools in reference services.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has entered libraries in various ways and raised concern about its potential ethical consequences therein. A number of approaches have been developed to encourage ethical AI and audit the ethics of specific AI applications, but very few approaches have been applied or tested, especially in a library setting, and so it remains unclear which, if any approaches are suitable or useful for encouraging ethical AI in libraries. We applied Ethical Foresight Analysis as an approach to identify possible ethical risks of an AI project for (semi-)automated subject indexing in a large research library. Specifically, to identify risks we conducted a two-round ethical Delphi study wherein experts on AI development, library practices, and AI ethics sought consensus on potential risks and their relative importance. The experts' post-test reflections on the procedure were then collected to inform an evaluation of the approach's feasibility. A variety of ethical risks of the specific project and of general AI indexing were indeed identified, most notably discrimination and under-representation stemming from attributes of the bibliographic training data provided by the library (e.g. varied historical contexts and gaps left by unindexed items). However, we identified some drawbacks of the approach tested: (1) it is time-consuming, which is likely prohibitive for many libraries, and (2) the identified risks were mainly well-known issues of AI and its training data rather than the subtle, application-specific, and human-centred issues that ethical foresight analysis might be employed to identify. Thus, although libraries should continue to model ethical AI through careful planning and auditing, alternative development and auditing approaches may be more practical to undertake and more effective at identifying novel or application-specific issues.