Building Community Partnerships in a Common Reading Program

Bridgewater, Massachusetts began its One Book One Community Reading program in 2005 with a steering committee comprised of members from a number of local organizations and the public library. When funding cuts drastically reduced the Bridgewater Public Library’s hours and staffing levels in 2008, it had to withdraw from the program. The program is still in existence due to the dedication of the members of the steering committee

Book Review: \u3cem\u3eElder Northfield\u27s Home or, Sacrificed on the Mormon Altar: A Story of the Blighting Curse of Polygamy\u3c/em\u3e

Review of Elder Northfield’s Home or, Sacrificed on the Mormon Altar: A Story of the Blighting Curse of Polygamy, by A. Jennie Bartlett. University of Nebraska Press, 201

Librarian Mentoring of an Undergraduate Research Project

Bridgewater State University has a dynamic, highly visible, and increasingly successful Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR) that supports students and their faculty mentors with developing research opportunities. Students working on undergraduate research projects have sought the help of librarians, but the librarians had never been directly involved as mentors. A librarian mentor and student library worker collaborated on a project to develop an online library guide, which is used by faculty and student researchers for discovering social justice resources, and found new paths to teaching and learning information literacy skills

Sustainability at BSU: Partnerships for Teaching, Community Outreach, and On-Campus Change

This panel will briefly present an update on teaching, community outreach, and campus action projects tied to sustainability and then will facilitate a discussion on next steps on the BSU campus. Examples of projects discussed will include green chemistry and interdisciplinary collaboration, One Book/One Community and sustainability outreach, student and faculty research and action tied to increasing biking on the campus, and transportation and climate mitigation tied research and action at BSU. The panel will also briefly introduce other projects supported by the Center for Sustainability and its faculty and staff partners including curriculum development, student grants, and community events

Just Enough of a Good Thing: Indications of Long-Term Efficacy in One-Shot Library Instruction

Website attributions were measured as one way of evaluating the efficacy of the “one-shot” library session. Survey results indicated support for single session information literacy instruction in that participants exposed to a librarian classroom visit reported that they would be significantly more likely to have used library databases, checked out a book, asked a librarian for help, and to predict that they would ask a librarian for help at a later time. Results also indicated that students who reported a classroom librarian visit may have engaged in more systematic or complex processing to evaluate websites in that they considered more attributes and took less time to make better judgments about the quality of sources

Poster: Just Enough of a Good Thing: Support for the Long-Term Efficacy of One-Shot Library Instruction

An experimental paradigm was used to measure website attributions as one way of determining the efficacy of the “one-shot” library session. Results indicated support for single session information literacy instruction. Participants exposed to a librarian classroom visit reported that they would be significantly more likely to have used library databases, checked out a book, asked a librarian for help, and to predict that they would ask a librarian for help at a later time. Results also indicated that students who reported having a librarian visit may have engaged in more systematic or complex processing to evaluate websites in that they considered more attributes and took less time to make better judgments about the quality of sources

Poster: Creating Order: The Role of Heuristics in Website Selection

A heuristic is a mental short-cut used in decision-making which allows people to make choices more efficiently. While they can be effective strategies they may also lead to biases. The present study researched how students used heuristics when evaluating websites retrieved from a Google search