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This study examines the correlational relationships between local journal authorship, local and external citation counts, full-text downloads, link-resolver clicks, and four global journal impact factor indices within an all-disciplines journal collection of 12,200 titles and six subject subsets at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) Library. While earlier investigations of the relationships between usage (downloads) and citation metrics have been inconclusive, this study shows strong correlations in the all-disciplines set and most subject subsets. The normalized Eigenfactor was the only global impact factor index that correlated highly with local journal metrics. Some of the identified disciplinary variances among the six subject subsets may be explained by the journal publication aspirations of UIUC researchers. The correlations between authorship and local citations in the six specific subject subsets closely match national department or program rankings.

As part of a research study to examine first-year college students' preparation for college-level research, students at six U.S. institutions of higher education were surveyed in the spring semester of 2021. The pandemic continued to affect the delivery of information literacy (IL) instruction and library services across the United States throughout the 2020-2021 academic year. When students completed this survey in April and May of 2021, the majority of instructional services were offered in synchronous and asynchronous remote formats. The students' engagement with librarians and librarian-created instructional resources were captured via the survey and analysed to determine whether students were able to leverage these interactions and materials despite the remote contexts. Students who did not interact with an academic librarian were less likely to use library resources, had more problems accessing information, and felt more overwhelmed by the quantity of resources and services offered by the library. Results show that intentional student-librarian interactions are a bridge to the acquisition and development of knowledge practices and dispositions of the ACRL "Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education." The findings suggest considerations for moving forward when it comes to communicating with students and delivering IL support in academic libraries around the world as countries emerge from pandemic conditions.

Technology has had a profound impact on how we listen to, create, and perform music. Among the Library of Congress' collections are wax cylinders, photographs, manuscripts, recordings, and more that document the evolution of sound technologies. Students can use these sources to assist them as they respond to and analyze music in all its historical and technological contexts. To support students in understanding how the recording technology used to produce sound informs the listeners' response to that sound, teachers may guide them to explore the digitized resources at the Library of Congress. Here, they can research the history of music machines from their inception and listen to many of the first recordings of sound. Students can observe how as music began to be recorded, certain elements, such as repetition, became less common, and the complexity of the music increased.

Recent resistance to teaching students about the history of racial power and privilege dynamics in the United States has been accompanied by a parallel resistance to LGBTQ+ studies and resources in K-12 classrooms, libraries, and extracurricular spaces. There is a very practical benefit to trusting teachers to craft lessons that integrate LGBTQ+ culture into their classrooms. Classrooms can be relatively safe spaces to challenge cultural biases and assumptions if discussions are managed appropriately. The availability of literature that depicts diverse cultures is important in helping young people develop cultural sensitivity and respect for those from different backgrounds. However simply leaving to teachers decisions about integrating LGBTQ+ themes could have harmful results. Teachers who have unconscious biases toward LGBTQ+ people could unknowingly manifest these biases in the classroom. Ricardo Phipps argues that oversight and accountability must exist in terms of cultural infusion in K-12 curricula. Advisory groups comprised of parents, teachers, school counselors, administrators, and community representatives, including people from culturally diverse backgrounds (race or ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, disability, etc.), are needed to support educators as they design lessons that address cultural communities with a history of marginalization, and school administrators have the ultimate responsibility to monitor the pedagogy of their teachers for content and teaching style.

Every sector in the twenty-first century makes use of technology for its activities, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic and higher education institutions are not exceptional. However, the cohorts enrolled in the selected higher education institution are from technologically challenged backgrounds. This suggests that in their previous schooling, technology was unemployed as a learning aid. As this may present some challenges for such students, this study aims to investigate challenges experienced by Cost Accounting 2 students who are from a technologically disadvantaged background. To accomplish that, a quantitative approach was used since it permits surveys to be delivered to the entire impacted population while also reducing sampling error. Because of the Coronavirus, online questionnaires were sent to 400 students, but only 119 (n=119) responded. Blended learning was found to be an effective technique for learning Cost Accounting 2 since the university provided sufficient information on how to use the system. However, there was a lot of discussion about internet access, learning materials access, and library resource access. Based on the findings, the blended learning is excellent for studying Cost Accounting 2 as long as the learning management system is customised such that students can navigate it effortlessly. Management must work with internet service providers to try stabilise internet connectivity in the students' neighbourhoods. The additional study can be done using a variety of research methods and target other groups of students.

School libraries are supplementary places enabling students to acquire reading habits and reading culture. The purpose of this study is to determine the status of libraries in schools and to take the opinions of teachers towards school libraries. For this purpose, a case study design has been utilized in the current research and observation and interview techniques have been employed. In the research, the libraries of all schools in a city centre have been observed. Through stratified purposeful sampling and criterion sampling methods, interviews were carried out with teachers working in school libraries. The research data were analysed via content analysis. As a result of the research, it was determined that two-thirds of the schools had libraries. Besides, it was revealed that the capacity of the school libraries is inadequate due to the limited physical space of the libraries in schools. Although there were computers and the internet in libraries, digitalization was determined to be limited. It was also shown that there were mostly classical works and the libraries covered inadequate number of contemporary books. When examining the genres of the books in libraries, it may be said that there were novels and story book by a majority, referring to a limited variety of genres. It has been concluded that students can not effectively use school libraries as expected due to by virtue of the limited library facilities. Accordingly, in order to ensure the effective use of school libraries by students, the physical conditions of the libraries should be improved as well as the variety and quality of the documents should be increased.

This study was to determine the relationship between e-library and quality assurance in the Federal Government Colleges (unity schools) in Rivers and Bayelsa states, Nigeria. The population comprised of the teachers and students (SS3 and JS3) of the six unity schools in Rivers and Bayelsa States Nigeria numbering 3186 (teachers 1019, students 2167). A research sample of 637 was used through proportional stratified random sampling technique using 20%. A self-designed questionnaire known as E-library and Quality Assurance Questionnaire (ELQAQ) was used to elicit information from the respondents. Three research questions and one null hypothesis were formulated. Mean, rank order, standard deviation and z-test were used to find solution to the research questions and the hypothesis. The major findings of the study include that Federal Ministry of Education (F.M.E.) is a pacesetter of quality education, the library (print or non-print/digital) is the heart beat of the school system as it increases ones reading habit, e-library has the capacity of storing large content of information which can be accessed from anywhere, not all unity school (under study) have functional e-library, the print library is still useful, unity school teachers and students prefer a blend of the print and e-library as both have their advantages. Based on these findings, it was recommended that the print library should not be relegated but upgraded periodically to complement the digital library for quality service delivery, the Federal Ministry of Education Nigeria should endeavor to complete and equip the e-libraries as planned, the Inspectorate division of the F.M.E. should always inspect schools facilities for quality assurance, more qualified ICT teachers should be recruited in the unity schools (as model schools) to promote computer literacy and the F.M.E. should implement effective and regular capacity building in the unity schools of Nigeria to maintain qualitative education as quality teachers produce quality students.

The study aimed to examine the level of satisfaction of students with disabilities with library and information services in Saudi universities. The descriptive survey approach was used. The study sample consisted of 35 students with disabilities enrolled in Imam Muhammad bin Saud Islamic University in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. A questionnaire was used to collect the data of the study. The results showed a number of information services and special environmental facilities available within the university central library, the frequencies, and percentages of their use by students with disabilities. They were ordered according to the students? responses: book borrowing service, book return service, audiobooks, large print, and Braille book services. Also, it was revealed that the degree of satisfaction of students with disabilities with the library services provided to them was high. In addition, the physical environmental facilities of the library from the point of view of students with disabilities were the availability of a personal and designated place to study such as computer spaces and chairs suitable for students? needs. The signs (directions) related to disability in the library and their compatibility with the needs of students with disabilities and the availability of tools and technologies to meet their needs in the library without the help of others were rated poor.

This reflection article explores how a library on a regional university campus adapted its services in response to the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. It delves into some of the novel conclusions drawn by its librarians about how the library has and will continue to contribute to the teaching and learning efforts of the campus community during and after the pandemic. Existing library services continued to be offered during the pandemic, albeit in modified capacities and in more digitally focused environments. Novel services were also created. At its core, the heart of the library is the human connections that librarians and library staff make with patrons, so choices were intentionally made to transform services in ways that still encouraged human connectedness and belonging within unprecedented circumstances. Specific topics include outreach and marketing; access services; reference and research services; information literacy instruction; grants; the role of physical and digital library materials in distance education; and faculty--student mentorship. The article also explores the novel conclusions drawn from the process of adaptation that will have far-reaching implications for the future of library services, as they contribute to the teaching and learning missions of campuses, once normalcy returns to higher education. Issues concerning the digital divide; equity of access; advocacy; and the implications of interactive, experiential learning are discussed.

In 2020, UNLV Special Collections and Archives conducted an internal audit of collections, strategic plans, and programming in order to assess how well it is meeting strategic goals of being more inclusive and increasing diversity and representation. In a data-driven institution, how can assessment be used to advocate for resources focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion? In conducting this analysis, UNLV hoped to answer the following query: how is progress measured if the goal is to preserve stories outside the traditional narrative (white, male, cisgender, heteronormative, etc.)? This article discusses strategies for assessing diversity in special collections and archives.

Academic libraries invest significant resources for developing collections of foreign-language materials, so it is important for librarians to understand how scholars use these materials. This study uses citation analysis to investigate how frequently scholars in the United States cite sources in languages other than English, taking German Studies as an example where one would expect to find multilingual scholarship. The results indicate that American scholars do incorporate foreign-language sources into their scholarly outputs, but the rate varies significantly between disciplines. Area studies collections should be developed to support discovery and use of diverse materials, including those in languages other than English.

After earning her second Master's degree, the author decided to leave her twenty-plus-year tenured English as a new language teaching career in the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) to become the director of middle school and upper school library services at a K-12 independent school in New York City. It was the first year she would serve as a full-time school librarian and it was the first time that she would have a majority white student body. In this article, the author shares her experience and details her student-centered approach to reinvigorating the school library through small policy changes and collection development decisions.

This time has been particularly tough on school librarians, who have worked to develop connections with students and teachers and leverage physical collections. With new variants of the virus emerging, the coming months and years may be more of a game of whack-a-mole as the country tries to conquer some versions of the virus and others pop up. Unfortunately, some experts predict that pandemic-era workarounds may be for years (Scudellari 2020). A school librarian's interactions with students, teachers, and administrators might be socially distanced off and on for some time, but there are still ripe opportunities to influence teaching and learning. Many librarians viewed their work performance over the last year and a half through what they did not accomplish and not what they did. This article's goal is to help them refocus and prioritize impactful activities.

Project-based learning (PBL) allows students to identify and find solutions to real-world problems using inquiry-based learning. While increasingly used in the K-12 classroom, PBL has not had widespread adoption in higher education. With the exception of Correll and Bornstein (2018), very little has been written about using PBL to redesign college and university Curriculum Resource Centers. However, because PBL is primarily a K-12 teaching pedagogy, it is the perfect fit to give pre-service teachers the active learning skills they will need for their future K-12 classrooms. The skills developed through project-based learning teach pre-service teachers to become independent and resourceful through learning how to develop their professional voices through inquiry. The authors of this article used PBL in conjunction with the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Guidelines for Curriculum Materials Centers (CMCs) and the three themes for PBL success in higher education identified by Lee et al. (2014) to work with a small class of upper-level elementary education pre-service teachers to redesign an academic library Curriculum Resource Center.

Writing to report research writing may be a daunting task since it requires motivation, interest, background knowledge and hard work from the part of students. This paper focused on the major obstacles faced by the English foreign language learners in research writing at Belhadj Bouchaib University, Algeria, in addition to the teachers' attitudes towards their students' work. The study relied on a triangulated approach which enclosed quantitative and qualitative methods and its importance lied in providing insights into the nature of flaws and challenges as regards students' academic writing practices. A questionnaire was used among 30 students followed by an interview with six teachers. The findings revealed that developing a research project and reporting the findings were among the most difficult challenges encountered by the learners. While the former requires them to identify the area of interest, choose a topic and formulate a researchable problem, the latter typically entails writing the methodology, results, and discussion sections. Between the two tasks, the students found academic writing the most challenging. The findings also revealed that teachers display negative attitudes towards their students' research because of these reasons: lack of motivation following traditional methods of learning, insufficient background knowledge about research, paucity of library resources, sketchy number of courses related to research, and the unavailability of the Internet inside the university context. Following these flaws, some recommendations were provided.

Selection policies are practical tools used by school librarians to guide them in their collection development plans. This investigation into district-level selection policies examined policies from 80 school districts across the United States. The policies were examined to determine the status of selection policies in school libraries and if the policies reflect the recommendations of professional literature. Through content analysis, we determined that most of the school library selection policies included at least half of the expected key components. However, there is a need for school librarians to advocate for revision of policies to keep them current and provide effective guidance for school librarians as they make selections for their collections.

Mindfulness has been a hot topic recently as many educators were forced to work from home over the past year and a half. Supporting students using mindfulness is a great way to model self-care behaviors, while being a listening ear and a shoulder to lean on. School librarians have a duty to ensure students find a safe haven in the school library. Creating a mindful collection of materials that supports students through tough times and with difficult topics, assessing the use of mindful design in library spaces, and providing space for mindfulness are all wonderful ways to support the health and healing of students.

The rising demand for digital information resources and services in the LAM sector has sparked many innovations by educators in recent years, as we seek to prepare students for careers in an environment that has continued to witness rapid and hard-to-predict changes. Granting agencies such as IMLS have played an important role in driving innovation to meet the needs of new professionals, in part by funding curriculum development projects within LIS schools, but also by facilitating dialogues between educators and practitioners. This work traces a 10-year process whereby one LIS school has designed and tested new courses as well as a new Master's concentration geared to the needs of LAM professionals who will be expected to work intensively with digital technologies, workflows, and collections. Through a succession of projects, some with grant funding, the school has been able to engage practitioners on an ongoing basis, enabling it to build a substantial and regularly updated body of case-study data on LAM practices, which has informed course development efforts and which has enabled the school to meet its key objectives of delivering authentic learning experiences for students and to maintain an up-to-date curriculum in an evolving area of study within the LAM disciplines. It is hoped that both the experience and the results to date will help justify continued support for innovations in LAM education.

What can school librarians do about library and book censorship? First, ask questions. Find out what your principal and your district have put into policy and what your principal's expectations are for your school library. Then, communicate with your classroom teachers. For ourselves, school librarians should work with colleagues, especially other certified, degreed media specialists, to help identify our implicit and explicit biases, and even fears, when selecting materials for our school libraries. We should do this when we consider books for selection, weeding, and deselection. As school librarians, we don't always have a say in the books we include or remove from our collections, especially today. But we do have a voice. We have a powerful voice to speak out for our learners and their families who fear their stories will be removed from the shelves. You have a choice. You can move in fear and silence, or you can move in power and with your voice. Let's use that voice for our learners.

Adults at school board meetings screaming at elected members about "groomer" and "pedophile" school librarians' books, programs, and displays. Politicians who repeat these claims and pledge to remove pornography from local schools. Public threats of physical harm or loss of livelihood against school librarians. The result of increasing instances of overt, concerted attempts to restrict our learners' access to materials and programs? Increasing admissions by school librarians that they feel forced to consider soft censorship. Many have had classroom teachers and administrators approach with informal concerns about titles, programs, or displays. Some have even had titles removed, displays taken down, and programs canceled outside school board policies. In School Library Journal's 2023 Controversial Book Survey, librarian reports that book challenges influenced their purchasing decisions for the library (across all grade levels) rose from 27% in 2022 to 37% in 2023. Twenty-four percent of respondents said they'd experienced harassment over books or displays in their library (Cockcroft 2023). School librarians as professionals must personally and organizationally address the very significant threat of self-/soft/quiet censorship. Organizations can track (and extrapolate) data on formal challenges, protests, and published complaints but the soft censorship that may be a consequence of these is much more insidious and likely detrimental to the goal of providing books, programs, and displays to meet a diverse range of diverse learner needs and interests. School librarians need both information and allies, including fellow educators and community members, to confront soft censorship in ourselves and others. It's critical to boost confidence in administration and classroom leaders that materials, displays, and programs align with curricular standards as well as school and district goals. It's important to specifically address the major targets in school libraries, including titles with LGBTQ and BIPOC characters, graphic novels, and manga, which constitute the majority of titles cited in lists of books formally challenged. Utilizing resources available for data-driven selection, deselection, displays, and programming in our schools can provide quantitative and qualitative support for ourselves and others.

Soft or self-censorship is when librarians' modify their book choices, not based on a selection policy, but on the climate. To avoid getting in trouble, they choose books that will not be controversial. The result may be that their self-censorship is a greater threat to school libraries than the actual book challenges. In this article, Robbie Barber examines how a data-driven process is a solution to be sure librarians' are meeting the needs of their learners and not second-guessing themselves. The data they collect through surveys, circulation, observation, and other methods, including their self-reflection process, determines their ability to provide a variety of materials for their learners.

According to a report by PEN America, 40% of banned and challenged books have BIPOC protagonists, and 41% have LGBTQ protagonists and/or LGBTQ major plots or themes. Librarians know that censorship is bad. Censorship surges in school libraries are not a new or uniquely 2020s problem. In the early 1980s, the American Library Association's (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom recorded a spike in ban attempts because some parents were fearful that their kids were being taught secular humanism. Dorothy Bendix wrote in 1969, "self-censorship by the librarian threatens the freedom to read. It is as great a threat, if not greater, than pressure group censorship." This article explores the question: how do librarians honor Bendix's assertions about the profession in this uncertain world?

The Wood River Middle School (WRMS) serves approximately 600 students a year. The school is diverse, with roughly half Latinx students and a large English language learner population. The library collection boasts almost 16,000 books. The most popular section? If you combine the manga and graphic novel sections, they win the top prize, with 38% of library circulation. Reading graphic novels and manga increases learners' literacy and provides them a scaffold into more complex texts. Having books in different formats encourages people to gain an understanding of a variety of topics. Graphic novels and manga are essential formats that belong in every library.

In this paper, we use the field of Health and Physical Education (H/PE) to explain the limitations, nuances, and inconsistencies of three global, digitally available, and regularly updated systems: library holdings, metrics, and altmetrics. We understand these systems through the analogy of seeing different vistas of a landscape when driving a car: looking in the rear-view mirror (i.e. library holdings as past indicators of quality) and out the side windows (i.e. metrics and altmetrics as current indicators). Before examining these measures, we acknowledge the neoliberal audit culture and outline our understanding of the H/PE 'field'. To identify H/PE journals, we searched databases, websites, and literature, generating a list of 202 potentially relevant journals. After three rounds of refinement, 13 journals remained that: (1) focused on health and/or physical education as a school subject (including H/PE teacher education), (2) had official metrics, and (3) self-identified as 'Social Sciences-Education' and had more than 20% of the papers in the last two volumes focus on H/PE. For each of these journals, we provide the WorldCat library holdings, metrics (i.e. Journal Impact Factor, Journal h-index, CiteScore, SCImago Journal Rank, and Source Normalized Impact per Paper), and altmetrics. We explain how to understand these measures, as well as their contested, problematic and, often, confusing dimensions. Overall, we argue that it is crucial for scholars to understand these measures so that they can critically reflect on how measurement shapes their research and professional lives.

Can a building's ornamentation grow and change? Can it inspire artists, educators, and other scholars to be creative in new ways? In this article, the authors, an instructional faculty team of two studio art professors and the fine arts librarian at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE), describe how its collection of Louis H. Sullivan (1856-1924) architectural ornaments inspired various artistic events, including collaborative studio art projects. The authors provide information about Louis Sullivan and his connection to Richard Nickel and SIUE's Sullivan architectural ornament collection. Next, the authors make a case that collaborative art projects and events like the examples add cultural value to original or similar artifacts in one's physical and virtual communities. Finally, they demonstrate ways in which technology facilitates such collaborative projects.

After many years working as a public school educator and school librarian, it is evident to the author that the relationships librarians cultivate with school library stakeholders--students, teachers, staff members, administrators, families, and community members--are the most critical ingredient to creating and maintaining vibrant modern-day school libraries. This article discusses how to create a human-centered library that emphasizes the value of relationships, librarians can focus on five areas in their school libraries: (1) space; (2) collection; (3) instruction; (4) programming; and (5) self-care.

This study assessed the influence of information literacy training on graduate students' self-rated ability to search using academic databases and the internet to find information, as well as their objective information literacy skills through a survey in 2017 at the University of Windsor. After controlling for a comprehensive set of covariates, there was not a statistically significant difference in self-rated searching ability between students with training and those without any training. However, the trained students' average objective assessment scores in the five dimensions of information literacy were significantly higher than those of students without any training at the significant level [alpha]=0.05.

Despite the popularity of mobile and digital technologies, physical collections still have high user demand in academic libraries and grow continuously. With renovation projects providing more studying and collaboration space, efforts to relocate materials to storage facilities are necessary for major libraries. With the change in student information needs and preferences, it is essential to reinvestigate their behavior and preferences for the use of physical resources and remote storage items. An online survey was conducted in a major international comprehensive university in Hong Kong, China, to explore these questions. Statistical tests were also performed to compare the difference between undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as those with versus those without experience requesting items from storage.

Librarians and educators have a unique opportunity to develop and incorporate gray literature instruction into nursing curricula, with specific focus on its definition, value, discoverability, and evaluation. This article presents a structured and hands-on approach to the collection of gray literature and its use in evidence-based nursing. Citation analysis provides empirical evidence identifying the types of such literature most used in nursing scholarship. Based on these findings, a method of gray literature instruction for nursing learners is established and presented.

Applying a content warning to metadata and archival descriptions is a practice that libraries increasingly embrace, even though the American Library Association considers content labeling to be censorship under the Library Bill of Rights. The language used in a content warning, such as "offensive" or "harmful," carries important implications for the responsibility the library assumes and the actions it might take. Before deciding to apply a content warning, libraries should consider a range of questions posed by such warnings and be prepared to respond to the inherent conflict they create with librarianship's commitment to intellectual freedom and anti-censorship.

This study explored the language preferences of instructors at Louisiana State University for library resources and whether library terminology influenced those choices. Participants were presented with both screen captures and definitions of electronic library resources and were asked to identify them in their own words. Faculty did not use library terminology consistently and performed better when presented with a definition than with a screen capture. No correlation was found between rank, teaching experience, college, or attendance in library instruction and preference for library terminology. A statistically significant relationship existed between frequent use of library resources and preference for library terminology. Confusion about this terminology could create difficulties for faculty in conducting their own research and may confuse their students when they hear conflicting language from their instructors and librarians. Librarians should use clear language, provide context on websites, and provide instruction on these resources specifically catered to instructors.

The pandemic forced many education providers to pivot rapidly their models of education to increased online provision, raising concerns that this may accentuate effects of digital poverty on education. Digital footprints created by learning analytics systems contain a wealth of information about student engagement. Combining these data with student demographics can provide significant insights into the behaviours of different groups. Here we present a comparison of students' data from disadvantaged versus non-disadvantaged backgrounds on four different engagement measures. Our results showed some indications of effects of disadvantage on student engagement in a UK university, but with differential effects for asynchronously versus synchronously delivered digital material. Pre-pandemic, students from disadvantaged backgrounds attended more live teaching, watched more pre-recorded lectures, and checked out more library books than students from non-disadvantaged backgrounds. Peri-pandemic, where teaching was almost entirely online, these differences either disappeared (attendance and library book checkouts), or even reversed such that disadvantaged students viewed significantly fewer pre-recorded lectures. These findings have important implications for future research on student engagement and for institutions wishing to provide equitable opportunities to their students, both peri- and post-pandemic.

During the pandemic, instruction moved online, and physical formats of media were unable to be used. This presented the opportunity to undertake a quantitative study on the use of streaming videos, particularly in the sciences, at Colorado College. The authors used vendor statistics for the last 5 years (2016-2017 to 2020-2021) and reviewed the time period of March-February, which is what the authors refer to as the COVID year. By 2021, streaming videos were being used 25 times more than in 2016, and science videos were being streamed 26 times as much.

This article intends to examine academic library resources and research support services for English teachers at higher education institutions. A sample of 318 English teachers from the public sector universities has been selected through the proportionate random sampling technique. A cross-sectional survey has been conducted to collect data using an attitudinal scale. The study findings of multiple regression confirm the prediction of research support services. It is concluded that academic library resources have favorable effects on research support services for English teachers at the public sector universities of the Punjab province.

Information ethics governs the way in which information is created, manipulated, and used. The integration of ethical values in education and coursework has been of interest in many fields, including the discipline of library and information science (LIS). Integrating information ethics in library and information science education and research is essential for preparing the next generation of information professionals for an increasingly diverse and multicultural society. This study examines information ethics from multicultural perspectives by exploring the extent to which LIS faculty view and articulate information ethics in their research and scholarly publications. The study sample was assembled by identifying the top LIS schools in the United States, selecting one LIS faculty member for each school, and examining the research output for each scholar for the use of multicultural and information ethics terminology. The text analysis was conducted using Python. Faculty were selected for the study based on their engagement in multicultural research rather than their minority status. The study results indicate that information ethics is not a primary research focus of LIS scholarship. There is no uniform reference for information ethics, and the most commonly associated terms received low percentage results. The impact of information ethics should be considered in every area of LIS scholarship and practice.

The right of persons with disabilities for equal access to education and educational resources is enshrined by international and country-specific anti-discrimination laws. Taking the Ethiopian context as an example, this paper sought to identify barriers of access to educational resources and explored ways for removing them. Seventeen students with visual impairments studying at Hawassa University were selected for semi-structured interviews. Moreover, five individuals working at the disability centre and the university library were interviewed. The results of the interviews were analysed thematically using the International Classification of Functioning, Disabilities and Health (ICF) as a framework. Access and accessibility problems that emanate from the learners' diverse background, lack of educational resources in alternative formats, lack of institutional tools (policy, procedure, guidelines, etc.) to bridge the gap between law and practice, and the digital divide were among the problems identified and discussed. At the end, the paper showed how libraries, revitalised as learning and information commons, could help to ensure the accessibility of educational resources and help learners with disabilities to acquire skills that may help them in their studies and their future undertakings.

This is the second article in a two-part SWOT analysis of academic libraries. The purpose of this research is to guide strategy development, decision making and advancement of positioning by identifying and analyzing the key strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats impacting academic libraries. Its premise is that an understanding of these elements, their overlap and the interplay between them is an essential foundation for the effective development of strategy. The research is unique in applying SWOT analysis to academic libraries collectively. The second article focuses on weaknesses and threats. Weaknesses are identified as conservatism, stakeholder misperceptions, economics and diversity. Declining position, identity blurring, competition and uncertainty constitute the key threats. Examination of these factors is followed by a discussion of the whole analysis and a proposed framework for future strategy development and positioning, based on ten strategic directions emerging from the analysis. These are: active positioning; knowing the territory; being politically attuned; prioritizing outward engagement; maximizing social capital; communicating value and identity; embracing uncertainty; addressing diversity deficits; leveraging change in scholarly communications; and maintaining long-term perspective.

Mzuzu University Library provides various e-library services to postgraduate students. However, a minimal amount is known regarding the use of these e-library services by postgraduate students. This mixed methods quantitative study aimed to investigate postgraduate students' use of e-library services. The findings reveal that 95% of postgraduate students knew about e-library services. In comparison, 83% knew internet access, and 73% knew e-journals service from 10 e-library services that Mzuzu University offers. Further, 80% and 64% of postgraduate students used the internet and e-journals, respectively, while other e-library services were the least used. Additionally, 68% of users were satisfied with the internet and 64% were confident with e-journals. Factors such as usefulness, availability of support, and resources influenced postgraduate students' use of e-library services. Inadequate infrastructure and staff support discouraged some users from effectively using e-library services. Training and marketing are highly recommended.

Open records requests can be an important tool in obtaining valuable information to use in negotiations with content providers. This paper examines the opportunities libraries have in requesting public information through open records requests to better support their purchasing decisions. The case is made for investing time up front to better understand contract terms and pricing already secured by public entities, using that knowledge to improve their position in the negotiating process.

This is the story of six books looted by Nazis from the Jewish Religious Community Library in Prague (JRCLP) that were discovered recently in the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Library. No scholarly literature describing similar experiences of North American academic libraries was found, nor were any professional guidelines for repatriating library materials. We describe our repatriation process, explore the historical contexts of the Nazi confiscation of millions of books and describe the Allies' post-war restitution efforts. As the digitization of academic library holdings worldwide progresses, the probability of uncovering more material of questionable provenance increases. This case study can open a dialog on the issue.

Given academia's frequent use of publication metrics and the inconsistencies in metrics across disciplines, this study examines how various disciplines are treated differently by metric systems. We seek to offer academic librarians, university rank and tenure committees, and other interested individuals guidelines for distinguishing general differences between journal bibliometrics in various disciplines. This study addresses the following questions: How well represented are different disciplines in the indexing of each metrics system (Eigenfactor, Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar)? How does each metrics system treat disciplines differently, and how do these differences compare across metrics systems? For university libraries and academic librarians, this study may increase understanding of the comparative value of various metrics, which hopefully will facilitate more informed decisions regarding the purchase of journal subscriptions and the evaluation of journals and metrics systems. This study indicates that different metrics systems prioritize different disciplines, and metrics are not always easily compared across disciplines. Consequently, this study indicates that simple reliance on metrics in publishing or purchasing decisions is often flawed.

In this study we developed a model and a spreadsheet tool for calculating, based on user input informed by available data, the probability of at least one usable copy of a monograph title surviving at various time horizons in shared print collections. The calculation incorporates four risk factors, which were assigned values based on research in the literature and our own studies. We applied the model to sample selected time horizons and risk tolerances, which suggests a minimum number of copies of a title needed for retention.