Sense and Reference discusses three recent blogposts on libraries getting rid of books to create spaces.
The effect of library instruction on student success
Three C&RL papers:
- The Academic Library Impact on Student Persistence: "a change in the ratio of library professional staff to students predicts a statistically significant positive relationship with both retention and graduation rates." (Note that they show correlation, not causation; in their discussion they're inclined to suspect that the effect of more library professional staff is an indirect one.)
- Measuring Association between Library Instruction and Graduation GPA: "if more than one or two library workshops were offered to students within the course of their program, there was a higher tendency of workshop attendance having a positive impact on final GPA. The results indicate that library instruction has a direct correlation with student performance, but only if a certain minimum amount of instruction is provided."
- Why One-shot Information Literacy Sessions Are Not the Future of Instruction: A Case for Online Credit Courses: "Researchers analyzed the pre- and post-test scores of students who received different types of instruction including a traditional one-shot library session and an online course. Results show that students who participated in the online course demonstrated significant improvement in their test scores compared to the other students. This study shows freshman students' needs for more comprehensive information literacy instruction."
- Jenica Rogers names names of vendors with annoying practices. Some vendors responded well; some badly. Jenica posted another followup on Vendors that delight me.
- SCOAP3 is an initiative to set up a consortium that redirects library funds from paying for closed access High Energy Physics journal subscriptions to funding these journals to be made open access. The FAQ goes into more detail about how the model will work.
- LIANZA 2011 starts on Sunday - #lianza11 tweets from all attendees will be captured in a set of CoverItLive sessions and I'll be liveblogging as much as my wrists allow
- the worldwide online Library 2.011 conference will follow, running from November 2 - 4, with sessions held in multiple timezones.
