Here is a guest post from Julie Teglovic, an MLIS student at the University of Denver, where students have been protesting a decision regarding the library… Library as Space: University Students Want Books This April, the paper books at the University of Denver’s Penrose Library began a move into a storage facility 10 miles away … Read more Students at the University of Denver Want Books
The Long Island University Faculty Federation is on strike. Librarians are included. Information is available at the LIU Faculty Federation home page.
University of Western Ontario Librarians are on strike. (Link goes to recent news from the Faculty Association.) From the press release announcing the strike: “It is with great regret that we make this decision,” said Bryce Traister, UWOFA President. “We simply haven’t seen enough movement on the key issues important to our members. We find … Read more University of Western Ontario Librarians On Strike
At my university, there is a group of student tour guides who give tours of the campus to prospective students and their families. The library is included in their tour, and it is often amusing to listen to the misinformation about the library that they sometimes include. We periodically provide updated information, and the tour … Read more Overheard
Julia Skinner has posted a thoughtful review of Critical Library Instruction: Theories and Methods to her blog. Her review will give readers a good sense of whether the books is for them.
McMaster University Librarian Jeff Trzeciak’s recently revealed in a talk at Penn State that he plans not to hire librarians in the future at his library, setting off a firestorm in Canada. (He said that he plans not to hire MLS holding librarians for professional positions but people with PhD’s in other fields instead.) The … Read more University of Alberta PLG on McMaster University Librarian Jeff Trzeciak’s rather open comments
No comment on this other than to say that Koofers is incredibly slimy, and it rankles me that they seem to be getting some tacit support from legitimate institutions. Here is a post by my friend Nicole Pagowsky on how Koofers ripped off one of her student papers and posted it to their for-profit site … Read more Koofers – stealing students’ work to help other students cheat
No comment about this or predictions about where the case may be headed or whether there will be broader implications for privacy down the road, except to say to anyone out there who uses an email account set up by a public university: Best to keep as much as possible on your own private email … Read more Professors’ email may be public
The use of certain library statistics, mainly related to circulation and its electronic semi-equivalents, has taken on a high degree of importance in library management since 1979, when Charlie Robinson introduced the “give ’em what they want” philosophy of collection development at Baltimore County Public Library. Circulation statistics provide an easy way present an argument … Read more Some objections to our use of library statistics
Toni Samek (winner of Library Journal‘s first annual teaching award in 2007) has a review of R. J. Cox’s The Demise of the Library School: Personal Reflections on Professional Education in the Modern Corporate University in the new issue of the CAUT Bulletin (Canadian Association of University Teachers). Her review begins: Library and information education … Read more Toni Samek reviews R. J. Cox’s The Demise of the Library School
“Library, Inc., by David Goldstein, in the new Chronicle Review, begins: From industry-backed research to CEO-style executive salaries and perquisites, the influence of corporate America on universities has been the subject of much popular and scholarly scrutiny. University libraries have largely escaped that attention. Yet libraries, the intellectual heart of universities, have become perhaps the … Read more Library, Inc. (Chronicle Review)
I just read and enjoyed this paper by MaryBeth Meszaros, “Who’s In Charge Here? Authority, Authoritativeness, and the Undergraduate Researcher,” in Communications in Information Literacy, vol 4, no. 1 (2010). It paints a more pessimistic picture of GenY students than we usually see. I wonder how GenY optimists would respond to her argument. I tend … Read more Undergraduates and the crisis of cognitive authority
Michael Bugeja wrote in Inside Higher Ed (a month ago – sorry for not blogging it sooner) about the proposed discontinuation and reorganization of the journalism school at the University of Colorado at Boulder: “Half-Truths on a J-School.” Readers will notice parallels between what journalism schools and library schools have been facing. I think it … Read more J-Schools in question – a familiar story
Today’s Chronicle of Higher Education has a piece about “link rot” within scholarly journal articles, which was the topic of our recent book by Michael Bugeja and Daniela Dimitrova, Vanishing Act: The Erosion of Online Footnotes and Implications for Scholarship in the Digital Age. Bugeja is interviewed in the article, which is titled, “A Modern … Read more CHE interviews Michael Bugeja
The Demise of the Library School: Personal Reflections on Professional Education in the Modern Corporate University Author: Richard J. Cox Price: $35.00 Published: June 2010 ISBN: 978-1-936117-18-5 Printed on acid-free paper In The Demise of the Library School, Richard J. Cox places the present and future of professional education for librarianship in the debate on … Read more New Book: The Demise of the Library School: Personal Reflections on Professional Education in the Modern Corporate University
I want to suggest a possible strategy for reference departments in academic libraries. I think a lot of library administrators who have an eye on the future see less of a role for reference, at least in the way we currently understand it. As they see it, it seems to me, it’s a waste of … Read more The “assessment piece” and reference strategy
A very intelligent op-ed on Truthout about the present situation for public intellectuals: Lewis R. Gordon, “The Market Colonization of Intellectuals.” I’m not a regular reader of Truthout, but maybe I will pay more attention to it now. Gordon is writing about the new economics of academia, and intellectual work within and outside the academy. … Read more The Market Colonization of Intellectuals
Critical Library Instruction: Theories and Methods Editors: Emily Drabinski, Alana Kumbier, and Maria Accardi Price: $35.00 Published: March 2010 ISBN: 978-1-936117-01-7 Bringing together the voices of a range of practicing librarians, this collection illuminates theories and methods of critical pedagogy and library instruction. Chapters address critical approaches to standards and assessment practices, links between queer, … Read more Critical Library Instruction: Theories and Methods