Transitioning by Degrees: Becoming a subject librarian through advanced education

This paper examines on librarian’s path from generalist librarian to subject specialist, with a focus on the value of additional advanced subject degrees in relationship to this work. Following the author’s career path from MLS to Business Librarian at a public university, the conversation also examines attitudes, perceptions, and frequency of additional advanced degrees in the literature

Why Training Doesn't Stick: Who is to Blame?

This article, "Why Training Doesn't Stick," presupposes that it does not, and that, as a matter of course, it is a waste of precious dollars to send someone to a workshop or a seminar for training. Soon after training goes the assumption that the trainee will be doing things the old way. While acknowledging that at least sometimes that training does stick, the author has come to understand that the conditions under which training is successful are so specific and so rarely met that when it happens it is the exception rather than the rule. "Who is to blame?" The author answers that question by explaining how we can turn the tables and make "training that sticks" the rule rather than the exception.published or submitted for publicatio

Identifying and Encouraging Leadership Potential: Assessment Technology and the Library Profession

published or submitted for publicatio

Implications for academic libraries

This paper may present a more restricted view of the academic library interface with collective bargaining than might have been anticipated, primarily for three reasons. First, I am more familiar with the Canadian academic library situation than with the American, although I have studied the pattern which appears to be emerging in American libraries. In addition, I am convinced that if academic library administrators had realized at any point within the past ten years that library management is a unique and demanding scientific discipline and had borrowed some of the techniques and methodologies being practiced in the business community, they could have been in a position of bargaining from strength rather than from weakness. Finally, I am firmly committed to the belief that academic librarians should achieve their status and any ensuing rights and privileges through their own merit, and not by accepting a system designed for another profession with similar, but not identical, objectives and requirements.published or submitted for publicatio

Should We Flip the Script?: A Literature Review of Deficit-Based Perspectives on First-Year Undergraduate Students’ Information Literacy

This mixed method systematic review considers recent literature on the information literacy (IL) skills of first-year undergraduate students. The review uncovers the following themes: faculty and librarians perceive first-year students as lacking IL skills; students have varying perceptions of their IL skills; assessment studies yield conflicting findings on first-year students\u27 IL; communication between high school and college librarians is challenging; and some IL researchers emphasise and leverage first-year students\u27 prior knowledge and experience in IL instruction. These themes emerge from extensive searches in four research databases for scholarly and professional articles written in English within the past ten years. With the exception of a few articles, studies reviewed consistently express their findings in terms of students’ gaps or deficits. We question whether this is the most productive basis for developing effective IL programs. Instead, we call for further investigation of students’ existing knowledge and skills as a basis for implementing constructivist and strengths-based pedagogies