Recent IL articles from the Journal of Academic Librarianship

JAL is a priced journal, the home page is at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00991333. Recent articles (mostly from last 2 issues) include:

Snavely, L. and Dewald, N. (2011) "Developing and Implementing Peer Review of Academic Librarians' Teaching: An Overview and Case Report." Journal of academic librarianship, 37 (4), 343-351. (They draw on experience at Penn State University)

Daugherty, A. and Russo, M. (2011) "An Assessment of the Lasting Effects of a Stand-Alone Information Literacy Course: The Students' Perspective." Journal of academic librarianship, 37 (4), 319-326. "The authors wished to measure the degree to which a library information literacy course establishes a foundation for life-long learning. A web-based survey was administered to 2147 currently-matriculating Louisiana State University students who had taken the one-credit information literacy course, Library and Information Science (LIS) 1001 (Research Methods and Materials). Though the response rate was relatively low, the survey revealed clear evidence that students continue to use the materials and skills taught in the course throughout their college careers for both course work and personal research."

Du, J. and Evans, N. (2011) "Academic Users' Information Searching on Research Topics: Characteristics of Research Tasks and Search Strategies." Journal of academic librarianship, 37 (4), 299-306. "This project investigated how academic users search for information on their real-life research tasks. This article presents the findings of the first of two studies. The study data were collected in the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Australia. Eleven PhD students' searching behaviors on personal research topics were observed as they interacted with information retrieval (IR) systems. The analysis of search logs uncovered the characteristics of research tasks and the corresponding search strategies."

Karshmer, E. and Bryan, J. (2011) "Building a First-Year Information Literacy Experience: Integrating Best Practices in Education and ACRL IL Competency Standards for Higher Education." Journal of academic librarianship, 37 (3), 255-266.

Stewart, C. (2011) "Measuring Information Literacy: Beyond the Case Study." Journal of academic librarianship, 37 (3), 270-272. (I think he really means "beyond the small-scale survey"; he advocates linking to larger scale surveys like the USA's National Survey of Student Engagement).

From an earlier issue, the following comes recommended by Peter Godwin
Bobish, G. (2011) "Participation and Pedagogy: Connecting the Social Web to ACRL Learning Outcomes." Journal of academic librarianship, 37 (1), 54-63.

Photo by Sheila Webber: Redcurrants at the farmers' market, Blackheath, July 2011