Is Advertising to Teenagers Ethical? Media’s Influence on Body Image and Behavior

An examination of the ethics involved in advertising to adolescents. Specifically, a content analysis and survey research was conducted dealing with how television commercials and magazine advertisements targeted towards males ultimately affect female body image and behavior. The content analysis consisted of Axe Body Spray advertisements, as well as Sports Illustrated: Swimsuit Edition. Findings of survey research include increased body monitoring as a result of exposure to advertisements. Implications and future opportunities are discussed

Reduction deduction: Facets as a key ingredient to searching effectively in a discovery layer

One of the benefits of a discovery layer is the large number and variety of results. In order to search effectively, students must learn to narrow down those results in a meaningful way. This activity helps students tap into prior learning by exploring their natural use of facets and limiters in commercial online shopping. Students are then asked to transfer their shopping behaviors into the discovery layer using the facets and limiters

Strategy, intentionality, and impact: A purchasing plan for library promotional swag

The labor and expense involved in developing a comprehensive outreach program can be overwhelming. There are often additional expenditures for marketing and promotional items to support the outreach events that go beyond costs of planning and staffing outreach activities. The Texas A&M University Libraries boast a robust outreach program—library employees participate in more than 100 outreach activities each calendar year. We developed programmatic strategies for improving the cost and labor efficiency of both purchasing and managing the distribution of library-branded promotional items as a part of these outreach efforts. Colloquially, these items are known as swag. This chapter will provide insight into why and how we created a swag inventory system to support our outreach program

Libr-AR-y Tours: Increasing Engagement and Scalability of Library Tours Using Augmented Reality

The Version of Record of this manuscript has been published and is available in College & Undergraduate Libraries, August 2018, https://doi.org/10.1080/10691316.2018.1480445Orienting patrons to library spaces, collections, and services is an important, but time-intensive, challenge for many librarians. Library tours are one strategy commonly employed to familiarize patrons with library spaces and services. Augmented reality provides a new opportunity for librarians to develop engaging and interactive unmediated tours. Augmented reality tours provide participants with an opportunity to explore library spaces and service points while affording librarians the chance to share valuable information about those spaces and services. This article details how one library constructed an augmented reality tour and shares assessment-based insights into participant responses to the augmented reality format

First Generation Success: Mixed-Methods Information Literacy Skills Assessment for First Year Writing Students

As universities seek to improve retention and graduation rates, more attention is being paid to populations that are statistically less likely to persist, such as first-generation students. Engaging with a campus-wide initiative targeting first-generation college students, librarians at a research university were awarded a grant to study the information literacy skills of this special population and to develop intervention strategies to help retain students. Partnering with the English department and a campus provisional admission program, librarians developed and taught special sections of the first year composition course, ENGL 104. These sections were designed to seamlessly embed information literacy concepts into the traditional ENGL 104 curriculum and to thoroughly assess the impact of this approach. This study was designed using a mixed-methods approach to better understand the information literacy knowledge and skills of first-generation students and to evaluate the impact of embedding information literacy into a course required for their degree plans

Flipping a student rave into a library-sponsored event

Library pranks, raves, and flash mobs have become increasingly popular in academic libraries. This recipe provides step-by-step instructions on how our library turned this unofficial library rave into a collaborative library party

Reduction deduction: Facets as a key ingredient to searching effectively in a discovery layer

One of the benefits of a discovery layer is the large number and variety of results. In order to search effectively, students must learn to narrow down those results in a meaningful way. This activity helps students tap into prior learning by exploring their natural use of facets and limiters in commercial online shopping. Students are then asked to transfer their shopping behaviors into the discovery layer using the facets and limiters

SPEC Kit 361: Outreach and Engagement

ARL SPEC KitLibrary outreach is experiencing a renaissance. Librarians have been reaching out to their communities and developing programming for decades, but libraries are increasingly being asked to demonstrate their value to the communities that they serve. In response, outreach positions are becoming more commonplace and communities of practice are emerging around measuring the impact of library outreach activities. This SPEC Kit was born out of the authors’ struggles and successes in providing academic library outreach services at their local institutions. The survey questions were designed to gather information from ARL institutions to create a picture of library outreach that spans across institutions; a professional baseline. Questions of organizational priorities, vision, goals, resource allocation, staffing models, and assessment come together to paint the picture of how libraries are approaching outreach programs. The survey was sent to the 125 ARL member institutions in July 2018, with 57 (46%) responding by the August 6 deadline. The data gathered suggests that systematic outreach programs are still very much in their infancy and highly dependent on local organizational culture. This SPEC Kit highlights the areas where libraries share approaches to outreach programs while also shining a spotlight on issues that warrant continued research and attention by outreach librarians and library administrators

Strategy, intentionality, and impact: A purchasing plan for library promotional swag

The labor and expense involved in developing a comprehensive outreach program can be overwhelming. There are often additional expenditures for marketing and promotional items to support the outreach events that go beyond costs of planning and staffing outreach activities. The Texas A&M University Libraries boast a robust outreach program—library employees participate in more than 100 outreach activities each calendar year. We developed programmatic strategies for improving the cost and labor efficiency of both purchasing and managing the distribution of library-branded promotional items as a part of these outreach efforts. Colloquially, these items are known as swag. This chapter will provide insight into why and how we created a swag inventory system to support our outreach program

Understanding student populations key to tailoring library instruction and outreach

Librarians commonly work with students who are grouped in a variety of ways, such as by course and by major. Another typical way that universities, and libraries, distinguish student groups is by class year. Increasingly, academic libraries have librarians dedicated to first-year student programming, often working closely with first-year experience programs at their local campus. This is not surprising, as higher education has emphasized a student's first year experience as a high impact practice and foundation for student success (Kuh, 2008). First-year experience programs can take a variety of forms such as first-year seminars, peer mentorship programs, common readers for all freshman, and first-year living learning communities. At the programmatic level, many universities focus on providing students with a shared or unified experience for all incoming freshmen