Amplify Your Impact: Creating a Bespoke Approach to Community Engagement: Influencer Marketing for 21st Century Libraries and Archives

Let’s face it. The past few years in library and archives land have been extremely trying for everyone, whether you are a seasoned professional with extensive experience, a new colleague, or a customer. The pandemic, budget austerity, divisive political environment, and onslaught of attempts to censor inclusive stories from school libraries, public libraries, and K-12 and post-secondary curricula have taken a significant toll. As digital connections played an essential role in keeping our institutions relevant during the first 12–18 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, our profession is having a renaissance in understanding how to leverage social media to amplify positive stories about our people, collections, services, and communities. It is high time for information professionals—beyond just communications, marketing, and community engagement-focused colleagues—to formally understand the power of influencer marketing in deepening sustained engagement with users

Too Broad and Too Narrow: One Library’s Experience with Approval Plans

In 2019 a public urban academic research library decided to implement a subject-based approval plan to assess its viability to replace single-title book ordering. However, due in part to our library’s unique collecting needs, the plan necessitated extensive and continuous reviews and revisions, which ultimately prompted us to discontinue the plan

The Road Ahead: ALA Publishing Committee Recommends CRediT as a Best Practice

Contributions to scholarly work are mostly recognized by means of assigning authorship credit, which can later be used in academic evaluations and for career progression. Sociologists of science describe authorship as a commodity that is bartered among scholarly contributors as well as with resources such as research samples. On the flip side, authorship also functions as a mechanism for holding contributors responsible for their work. Despite its significance as means of attributing credit and responsibilities, when beginning a collaboration, researchers might feel uneasy about discussing authorship—specifically, who will be an author and in what order—or about openly communicating expectations regarding commitments and extent of contributions that ultimately determine authorship. These challenges are particularly more pronounced for junior researchers who are inexperienced in authorship negotiations and are at an inherent disadvantage in terms of power disparity with more senior researchers. Consequently, tensions and disagreements may arise and provide the impetus for discussions about authorship, but this is often too late and is more likely to be emotionally charged

In Brief

AlabamaAlbert L. Scott Library, AlabasterIn September 2022, a patron emailed Albert L. Scott Library to request the removal of all two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, intersex, and asexual (2SLGBTQIA+) materials from the children’s department. They spent a month exchanging messages with a librarian, who gently explained the role of the library in serving all patrons

Webtoon: The Confluence of Platformization, Snack Culture, and the New Korean Wave

Entertainment media platforms are diversifying. The evolution of information technologies enablesmore convenient access to information and provides different sensory experiences. Reading isnot an exception, as increased media affordances such as audiobooks and interactive ebookshave diversified the reading experience. Webtoon, a newly emerged webcomic reading platformthat originated in South Korea, is one example of a new entertainment media platform. Webtoonis specifically designed to be read on a smartphone and demands the user’s active engagementthrough scrolling. Its format relies upon the user’s ability to read and understand text, pictures,and occasional auditory input such as music or dramatic noises. Several studies have examinedwebtoon’s cultural and artistic aspects, focusing on it as a transnational communication medium ora kitschy, artistic medium.1 However, little research has been conducted to understand the influenceof the webtoon reading experience and, specifically, how that reading experience differentiatesfrom and expands upon book-based reading experiences

Active Learning in UX Instruction: A Four-Step Approach for Teaching Budding UX-ers

Active learning strategies are a prominent method of instruction designed to encourage learner engagement through concrete application of concepts and deep reflection to facilitate meaningful learning experiences for library professionals. Despite documented benefits, however, there is limited published literature on the implementation of active learning to user experience (UX) instruction. In this paper, we provide an example of our approach to active learning within the context of a guerrilla testing instructional workshop for library staff using a four-step lesson plan identifying tasks; writing scenarios; running tests; analyzing results). We focus attention on the importance of small group work, the role of facilitators in providing participant support, and the use of self-reflection as central aspects of the workshop design. Sample active learning strategies are highlighted throughout along with key lessons learned and recommended improvements for future workshops tailored to library contexts

Podcasts as Programming: Reaching Busy Parents on Their Time

During a two-year post-pandemic period (2021 to 2023), the Youth Services Department at the Patchogue-Medford Library in Suffolk County, NY, hosted fourteen parental education programs, both in-person and virtually. Despite offering evening sessions and partnering with the local school district, attendance averaged just five parents per program, and it became clear that the library’s efforts were not meeting the modern parenting moment

Math and Aftermath: Impacts of Unbundling a Large Journal Package on Researcher Perceptions and Behavior

This study seeks to understand the effects on researchers’ work at a large research university in the wake of the university library’s shift from a near-comprehensive journals package with a single, large publisher to a selective list of individual journal subscriptions. Analyzing historical journal usage, along with turnaway and interlibrary loan trends from the years following the changes, the authors made use of structured interviews with local researchers to bring context and meaning to the quantitative data. The interviews highlighted researchers’ strategies for gaining access to literature in their fields to which the library does not subscribe, and revealed assumptions about timeliness of access, as well as relationships between library subscriptions and local researchers’ publishing behavior

From the Committees of RUSA: Outstanding Business Information Sources 2024

Each year, the Business Information Sources Committee of the Business Reference and Services Section (BRASS) selects the outstanding business information sources published since May of the previous year. This year, the committee reviewed twelve entries; of these, two were designated as “Outstanding” and three as “Notable.” Works are examined for the following: ease of use; reputation of the publisher, author, or editor; accuracy; appropriate bibliography; organization; comprehensiveness; value of the content; currency or timeliness; uniqueness; quality and accuracy of index or cited references; and quality and usefulness of graphics and illustrations. This year’s selection of works runs a wide range of topics from: the latest in green finance, issues of natural resource depletion and overreliance, social media influencers from beginnings to current industry, mega project management, and an eye-opening work on the destruction of industries because of private equity firms

Developing a Pandemic-Related Mental Health Micro-Collection for an Academic Library

Academic library patrons dealing with the impact of trauma, depression, anxiety, or addiction spawned or exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic require materials that address the unique conditions that have shaped mental health since late 2019. This paper demonstrates how one academic library endeavored to address patrons’ needs for mental health resources by developing a “Coping and COVID-19” micro-collection