“Their presence does not make people feel safe.”

“Colleges Are Deeply Unequal Workplaces,” reads the title of Jeffrey Selingo’s August 1 essay in the Atlantic Monthly. Examining how the pandemic has affected university […]

Academic librarians, like so many others in the higher education and library sectors, have discussed equity, diversity, and inclusion for many years. A number of prominent initiatives have worked to address these issues across the profession and within individual institutions. Yet, libraries have struggled to make progress on these stated values, especially in meeting their goals of employee diversification. The organizing led by Black Lives Matter activists in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd sparked an increase in demands for racial justice across the higher education sector. Many leaders called for an end to police violence and pledged to address their institutions’ history of racism. Academic libraries in turn have grappled with renewed attention to increasing the diversity of their employees, addressing retention issues, and fostering equity and inclusion for both internal and external constituents. Some have also focused their efforts on library practices such as increasing the diversity of their collections. To better understand the impact of these national events and long-standing challenges on academic libraries, we surveyed 638 library directors in fall 2020 to examine how perspectives and strategies relevant to issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism evolved over the last year

Keyloggers, yikes!

Confidential information for about 126,000 students and employees at six community colleges in Florida were publicly available on the Internet for five days, a state library service center announced Tuesday.

Its Admissions Center will be housed inside the state-of-the-art building, which will serve as a focal point for the innovative and nimble High Point University.

For the past little bit I’ve significantly switched my social media use to reflect- in my opinion- the most interesting aspect of me, which is my 3 degrees. I’ve switched to posts about…

Over the past few years I have been talking about three systemic ways in which collections, broadly understood, are evolving in a network environment. They are: the collective collection, the facilitated collection, and the inside-out collection.

The primary objective of the study was to describe the number, types and titles, requested qualifications and skills, salary information, and locations of positions advertised in 2011 on the ALA JobLIST and ARL Job Announcements websites and in the print version of the Chronicle of Higher Education for purposes of determining the current state of the academic library job market in the United States. To investigate changes in the academic library job market and identify emerging trends over a 23-year period, results also were compared to studies that analyzed position announcements from 1996 and 1988. Content analysis of 957 unique academic library job advertisements revealed relative stasis in the market regarding the number of positions advertised, presence of administrative duties, geographic distribution of positions, and, to some extent, educational requirements. However, other comparisons were more dynamic. Specifically, there has been a decline in foreign language skills and prior work experience requirements over time while computer skills are increasingly sought. Perhaps most striking is the proliferation of new position titles that have emerged over time, which serves as an indication that library positions are becoming increasingly specialized.

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What is library anxiety? Librarians and experts discuss how technology is changing students' attitudes toward libraries and librarians.

A shared future for librarianship and publishing: open and equitable access to scholarship at the level of digital access to textbooks.

On July 23rd, the Librarians' Assembly of the Z. Smith Reynolds Library, the governing body of ZSR Library faculty, voted to endorse the following statement on online proctoring services: ZSR Librarians' Assembly, Statement on Online Proctoring Services, July 23, 2020 Online exam proctoring services deploy software-based interventions into students' personal computers and homes in order to [...]

Although most academic library websites include a webpage of information intended for users with disabilities, no research was located that solicited feedback about users’ needs or preferences for these pages. To address this discrepancy, 12 university students with disabilities were interviewed about their perspectives on navigation, search terms, organization, desired content, and the overall look and feel for such a webpage. These interviews revealed numerous important considerations around accessibility and inclusivity, and a list of recommendations was compiled.