More Than Just a Number? The Impact of Age and Generational Affiliation on Christian Academic Librarians’ Beliefs About the Future of Librarianship and Higher Education

This article investigates the relationship between academic librarians’ demographic characteristics and their beliefs about the future of academic librarianship and higher education. The researcher administered a survey to a group of academic librarians at Christian colleges and universities, with the intent of identifying possible correlations between particular demographic characteristics, such as age and generational affiliation, and four pre-established belief constructs. Statistical analysis of the survey results revealed that no significant differences exist between age groups, generational groups, experience levels, geographic locations, or type of institution with regard to Christian academic librarians’ beliefs about the future of academia and academic libraries

University libraries in a changing environment: experiences and the way forward in the new e-learning environment in Zimbabwe

The paper looks at the reasons prompting academic librarians to embrace e-learning and the benefits that can be derived from using electronic information services. The authors came up with some suggestions that academic librarians can positively participate in e-learning by providing and advocating for the use of electronic books and journals, promoting the open access initiative, imparting information literacy skills, providing selective dissemination of information and document delivery services and establishing and promoting the use of institutional repositories. The paper ends by giving recommendations on how society can get ahead with e-learning by involving academic librarians in the development nexus

Academic Freedom Issues for Academic Librarians

Professors Danner and Bintliff argue that understanding academic freedom and faculty tenure is important for academic librarians, both to provide better perspective on the concerns of faculty researchers and teachers, and to highlight matters of common concern to librarians and faculty. The authors discuss the basic tenets of academic freedom and tenure, then compare academic freedom with the intellectual freedom concerns of librarians. The article concludes by introducing several current issues of importance to librarians, faculty, and everyone concerned with academic freedom on university campuses

The Y Factor

In my last column, I discussed the issue of faculty status, trying to analyze why librarians have failed to achieve their most desired target -- academic respectability. I concluded that faculty culture does not accept librarians as equals. Yes, librarians may be useful -- they may eve be expert in what they do -- but they are different. Faculty may be ready to grant librarians something, but it is not equal status. Maybe it is time to examine the need for status that librarians exhibit

Framing Collaboration: Archives, IRs, and General Collections

Collaborative collecting highlights the opportunity for liaison librarians and archivists in academic libraries to develop an integrated and holistic approach to the successful collection of library materials. Yet as academic libraries become the central location for general collections, institutional repositories, university archives, manuscript collections, and other special collections, the world of collecting in academic libraries becomes more siloed. The profession stands to benefit from a stronger realization of shared collecting practices. Liaison librarians have the potential to provide critical information to archivists in support of faculty collecting and research. Archivists have the opportunity to provide liaison librarians with context about university units and the organization’s broader history. Shared information can result in more robust collecting policies and practices across the library

Data Services in Academic Libraries – What Strange Beast Is This?

Data services, though a longstanding specialization, is a fast-growing and in-demand niche in the academic librarian job market. That said, it is still somewhat of a mystery to many outside of a small circle in academic librarianship. This essay attempts to remedy this mystification. The author gives an overview of data services librarianship, using examples from her San José State University INFO 220-12 class, “Data Services in Libraries,” to illustrate the core aspects and activities of this specialization in academic libraries. In so doing, she elucidates how this specialization is at once a natural extension of established roles for academic librarians and also an opportunity for librarians to expand their roles for increased relevancy in the higher education research enterprise

Libraries and Student Retention

Mick Williams presented the workshop “Libraries and Student Retention” at the June 2015 Association of Christian Librarians Conference. This article of the same name encapsulates key points that were shared during the workshop’s PowerPoint presentation on how academic librarians can actively promote student retention at their own institutions of higher learning

Librarians as Teachers: A Qualitative Inquiry into Professional Identity

This study explores the development of ???teacher identity??? among academic librarians through a series of semi-structured interviews. Drawing both on the idea of teacher identity from the literature of teacher education and on existing studies of professional stereotypes and professional identity development among academic librarians, this study explores the degree to which academic librarians think of themselves as teachers, the ways in which teaching has become a feature of their professional identity, and the factors that may influence academic librarians to adopt a ???teacher identity??? as part of their personal understandings of their role on campus.published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

What ACL Means to Me

What can one say about an organization that has played such a vital role in promoting the professional development of Christian academic librarians? Ever since my first conference in 1984 at Houghton College in Houghton, New York, I have experienced a growing love and appreciation for this wonderful organization called the Association of Christian Librarians and for its many fine members