John M. Stratton

Successful Approaches to Teaching Through Chat

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to determine whether librarians at the University of Kansas are providing instruction through chat in order to develop best practices for training purposes.Design/methodology/approach – The authors analyzed a sample of chat transcripts using the “ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education” to determine whether librarians were utilizing opportunities for instruction in the chat medium. Using this analysis, they selected the best examples of instructional techniques.Findings – Students were open to receiving instruction through chat. Librarians who were most successful in providing assistance to students demonstrated persistency and approachability in their interactions.Practical implications – The authors developed a list of top ten practices for instruction through chat which can be used for training purposes.Originality/value – Librarians need to continue to develop instructional techniques to create more opportunities for teaching moments i...

Toward Open Access: It Takes a “Village”

ABSTRACT Academics and librarians have worked in tandem for many years to broaden access to the scholarship they create, scrutinize, collect, and consume. Recent developments have focused on campus faculty advocating for change by developing self-imposed open access policies. Such policy developments have occurred in an evolutionary process, the beginnings of which might be identified as the “serials crisis” peaking in the 1990s, followed by the focus on efforts to examine and reform broken aspects of the system of scholarly communication, and most recently the feasibility of faculty-initiated open access policies on university campuses. This article provides an analysis of one universitys 10- year evolution to an open access policy focusing primarily on its advocates’ lessons learned and the librarys role in order to add the perspective of a public institutions experience.

Grappling with Changing Realities

Imbued with the sense of mission to serve as cultural and intellectual bastions, research libraries have continued to build collections to meet both immediate and anticipated future scholarly needs across a broad range of disciplines. While this mission may still stand as a guiding precept today, the issues facing collection development librarians have changed immensely since the millennium. Some important questions remain: How do we continue to meet the mission of building research collections in an era marked by considerable budget constraints, technological innovation, new publishing models and changing expectations from users? How do we engage these changing realities? Over the last several years the University of Kansas (KU) Libraries have developed several methods to enhance traditional collection development practices in an effort to grapple with the continuing challenge of building research collections relevant to modern scholars and students. This presentation will provide an overview of these strategies, which have included improved ways both to develop and manage collections. Such methods have included improved ways to manage resource expenditures (spending deadlines, database steward program, approval plan review), engaging in collection building (e-book acquisitions, purchase on demand) and collection management practices (serial review, WorldCat Collection Analysis, significant analysis of recent monographic and database usage), among other approaches. In addition, we have guided our work with ideas gleaned from the perspective of institutional and library leadership about the future of research library collections and where such collections may be headed. The audience will be asked to share methods that we, as collection development professionals, can adopt to balance collection development practices within the institutional framework. Attendees can expect to learn how research libraries are adapting collection development strategies to meet the changing needs of users, ongoing budget constraints, and the vision of the future of collections as articulated by our library leadership.