Session Description:
Learn about one high-impact learning experience: student participation in faculty research. Two librarians designed a collaborative research process for themselves and three students, investigating the reading experiences, abilities, habits, and preferences of students at an urban community college. Introducing new skills, tools, and concepts to novice researchers was key. Each step was “slowed down,” not just planning what to do next, but also discussing the whys and hows of research. This had a profound impact on researchers and research design. Most importantly, having members of the subject population invested in the research design process helped ensure reliability of research findings.

Session Description:
Still relatively new at many educational institutions, the positions of Digital Scholarship Librarian and Data Services Librarian frequently require the appointees to find novel ways of expanding the repertoire of new services. Writing from the perspective of library specialists working at a mid-size urban university and using the data collected from a faculty digital scholarship needs assessment survey and follow-up interviews in the background, the paper will focus on the question of whether libraries are places that primarily incubate relationships or (new) services and how these two distinct roles complement and sometimes compete with each other.

Session Description:
How can the library quantify its value? What are the significant contributors to student success? This presentation seeks to answer these questions by exploring student engagement and success at one large, public research university. The university library, along with representatives from the Provost’s Office, Student Affairs, the Career Center, and Academic and Student Support Services, joined together to align student engagement metrics with measures of student success. Key findings and the processes used to accomplish this alignment and analysis will be shared and can be used a model by other institutions.

Session Description:
The standard professional credential for American librarians is a master’s degree in library science. Yet librarians, especially academic librarians, spend much of their time creating: everything from information literacy curricula to research projects and reference service models. And creation is the realm of design. This paper argues for recasting the narrative of academic librarianship as a design profession rather than a “library science.” Real-world examples will show how epistemological elements of design are already present in academic librarianship and how they align with and support academic librarianship’s focus on education and social justice.