This article raises questions about current educational reform efforts now underway in a number of nations. Research from a number of countries is used to document some of the hidden differential effects of two connected strategies—neo-liberal inspired market proposals and neo-liberal, neo-conservative, and middle class managerial inspired regulatory proposals, including national curricula and national testing. This article describes how different interests with different educational and social visions compete for dominion in the social field of power surrounding educational policy and practice. In the process, it documents some of the complexities and imbalances in this fiel do f power. These complexities and imbalances result in “thin” rather than “thick” morality and tend toward the reproduction of both dominant pedagogical and curricular forms and ideologies and the social privileges that accompany them.

Creating Difference: Neo-Liberalism, Neo-Conservatism and the Politics of Educational Reform

Does personal social media usage affect efficiency and well-being?

This study explores the development of “teacher identity” among academic librarians through a series of semistructured interviews. Drawing both on the idea of teacher identity from the literature of teacher education and on existing studies of professional stereotypes and professional identity development among academic librarians, this study explores the degree to which academic librarians think of themselves as teachers, the ways in which teaching has become a feature of their professional identity, and the factors that may influence academic librarians to adopt a “teacher identity” as part of their personal understandings of their role on campus.

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Librarians as Teachers: A Qualitative Inquiry into Professional Identity

Much library research over the last decade has focused on serving this particular group of library user. The project synthesizes and supplements past recommendations with a survey of academic institutions in the Southern USA. Data were collected from 123 colleges and universities. Both librarians and international student support staff agreed that the major challenges international students face are language/communication problems, adjusting to a new educational/library system, and general culture adjustments. The paper recommends a model for library skills training for internationalstudents by weaving together ACRL’s Information Literacy Competency Standards with the communication, educational and cultural adjustments international students encounter when studying in the USA.

Communicating with and empowering international students with a library skills set

This is a comparative study on information needs and information-seeking behavior of international graduate students and American graduate students. This user study is based on empirical data collected from an online survey conducted between April 7 and May 28, 2005, at Virginia Tech. The goal of this comparative study is to investigate how graduate students from diverse ethnic groups discover, select, and use various information sources and to obtain insights into international graduate students’ information-seeking behavior, especially its similarities and differences compared with the information-locating patterns used by their American peers.

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Information-Seeking Behavior of International Graduate Students vs. American Graduate Students: A User Study at Virginia Tech 2005

Summary The ways librarians learn to teach, their educational paths to the profession, and current employer expectations are significant aspects of an ongoing national dialogue on information literacy. For over 15 years, our profession has discussed information literacy in terms of how we can actively teach our students research skills. The authors illustrate the importance of instruction and information literacy skills in academic libraries on several fronts: market needs, literacy standards, and graduate preparation for meeting the needs and standards from the employer's perspective (as expressed in advertisements) and from the employee's perspective (as manifest in survey responses).

The Politics of Pedagogy: Expectations and Reality for Information Literacy in Librarianship.

Summary Every reference encounter is an instructional encounter. Reference services to adult learners must be as flexible as the learners' technological savvy and learning styles. Furthermore, a variety of instructional methods must be used. This study presents survey results of a sample graduate student population which is outside the mainstream of traditional college students. We present a Close Encounter Model of reference services to meet this population.

A Close Encounter Model for Reference Services to Adult Learners: The Value of Flexibility and Variance

Summary Professional development opportunities for instruction librarians have been greatly improved by the Association of College and Research Libraries' Institute for Information Literacy Immersion program. An intensive information literacy program, Immersion participants return to their institutions with strengths, skills and possibilities to incorporate new ideas about information literacy into their programs. The experiences of the two authors and reactions from other participants will illustrate the benefits and importance of Immersion and other programs for professional development.

Leading Information Literacy Programs: Immersion and Beyond.

The purpose of this article is to outline the “best common practices” at Regent University Library, and share survey data illustrating their effectiveness. Also discussed is how transitioning from an entirely graduate university to a university serving both graduates and undergraduates has influenced library services. The new constituency will increase interlibrary loan transactions and test the library's practices. Providing quality interlibrary loan service to a growing academic population requires innovative ideas and practices while keeping the workflow streamlined. New programs implemented over the past several years include books on demand and providing more electronic books and journals. A growing distance education student population has led to paying for library cards for academic libraries located near students' homes and permitting them to return materials to satellite campuses.

Sara Baron

Papers

Communicating with and empowering international students with a library skills set

The Politics of Pedagogy: Expectations and Reality for Information Literacy in Librarianship.

A Close Encounter Model for Reference Services to Adult Learners: The Value of Flexibility and Variance

Leading Information Literacy Programs: Immersion and Beyond.

Common Practices for Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery at a Small Private University : We Want It and We Want It Now