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Objective – This paper analyzes the design process for a toolkit for appraising emerging and established bibliographic reference generators and managers for a particular student population. Others looking to adapt or draw from the toolkit to meet the needs of users at their own institutions will benefit from this exploration of how one team developed and streamlined the process of assessment.

Methods – The authors implemented an extensive initial evaluation using a checklist and comprehensive rubric to review and select reference tools. This work was guided by a matrix of categories from Marino (2012), Bates (2015), and other literature. As the tools were assessed using the toolkit, the components of the toolkit were evaluated and revised. Toolkit revisions were based on evaluators’ feedback and lessons learned during the testing process.

Results – Fifty-three tools were screened using a checklist that reviewed features, including cost and referencing styles. Eighteen tools were thoroughly evaluated using the comprehensive rubric by multiple researchers to minimize bias. From this secondary testing, tools were recommended for use within this environment. Ultimately the process of creating an assessment toolkit allowed the researchers to develop a streamlined process for further testing. The toolkit includes a checklist to reduce the list of potential tools, a rubric for features, a rubric to evaluate qualitative criteria, and an instrument for scoring.

Conclusion – User needs and the campus environment are critical considerations for the selection of reference tools. For this project, researchers developed a comprehensive rubric and testing procedure to ensure consistency and validity of data. The streamlined process in turn enabled library staff to provide evidence based recommendations for the most suitable manager or generator to meet the needs of individual programs.

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Objective – Information literacy (IL) skills are critical to undergraduate student success and yet not all students receive equal amounts of curriculum-integrated IL instruction. This study investigated whether Facebook could be employed by libraries as an additional method of delivering IL content to students. To test whether students would engage with IL content provided via a library Facebook page, this study compared the engagement (measured by Facebook’s reach and engagement metrics) with IL content to the library’s normal marketing content.

Methods – We ran a two-part intervention using the University of Canterbury Library’s Facebook page. We created content to help students find, interpret, and reference resources, and measured their reception using Facebook’s metrics. Our first intervention focused on specific courses and mentioned courses by name through hashtagging, while our second intervention targeted peak assessment times during the semester. Statistics on each post’s reach and engagement were collected from Facebook’s analytics.

Results – Students chose to engage with posts on the library Facebook page that contain IL content more than the normal library marketing-related content. Including course-specific identifiers (hashtags) and tagging student clubs and societies in the post further increased engagement. Reach was increased when student clubs and societies shared our content with their followers.

Conclusion – This intervention found that students engaged more with IL content than with general library posts on Facebook. Course-targeted interventions were more successful in engaging students than generic IL content, with timeliness, specificity, and community being important factors in building student engagement. This demonstrates that academic libraries can use Facebook for more than just promotional purposes and offers a potential new channel for delivering IL content.

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Objective – The Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education has generated a significant amount of discussion among academic librarians; however, few have discussed the potential impact on learning when students interact directly with the Framework itself. At the University of Notre Dame, over 1,900 first-year students completed an information literacy assignment in their required first-year experience course. Students read a condensed version of the Framework, then wrote a response discussing how a frame of their choosing was reflected in an assigned reading. The goal of this exploratory study was to determine if the students demonstrated an understanding of the themes and concepts in the Framework based on this assignment.

Methods – Topic modeling, a method for discovering topics contained in a corpus of text, was used to explore the themes that emerged in the students’ responses to this assignment and assess the degree to which they connect to frames in the Framework. The model receives no information about the Framework prior to the analysis; it only uses the students’ words to form topics.

Results – The responses formed several topics that are recognizable as related to the frames from the Framework, suggesting that students were able to engage effectively and meaningfully with the language of the Framework. Because the topic model does not know anything about the Framework, the fact that the responses formed topics that are recognizable as frames suggests that students internalized the concepts in the Framework well enough to express them in their own writing.

Conclusion – This research provides insight regarding the impact that the Framework may have on student understanding of information literacy concepts.

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Objective – This study aimed to test the efficacy of a warmth-based library instruction intervention in reducing rates of library anxiety in first-year undergraduate students. "Warmth" is a concept that is commonly discussed within literature on library anxiety, but to date no studies have explicitly tested the application of a warmth-based instruction intervention. First-year students are ideal targets for this intervention because they are the most likely to experience library anxiety.

Methods – A quasi-experiment was conducted examining library anxiety rates in first-year undergraduate students at a public research university in the U.S. South. A one-shot warmth-based instruction session focusing on the emotional dimensions of library use was compared to a standard one-shot instruction session. Library anxiety was measured using a modified version of Bostick's Library Anxiety Scale as a pretest and posttest.

Results – Results indicated that both warmth-based and standard library instruction were associated with a decrease in participants' library anxiety rates without significant differences between the types of instruction. However, warmth-based instruction was correlated with greater reductions in areas of library anxiety related to interactions with library workers. Though library anxiety rates decreased significantly after experiencing library instruction, participants exhibited low levels of library anxiety before their library instruction session occurred.

Conclusion – Though warmth-based instruction did not have a significantly different impact than standard library instruction on general library anxiety, the intervention tested in this study suggests strategies that could be used to increase student comfort with library workers. This study also demonstrates a successful method to include emotional factors such as library anxiety in academic libraries' regular assessment programs. Focusing assessment on students' skills and knowledge alone risks ignoring an important aspect of student engagement and missing opportunities for academic libraries to connect with students. Assessment of emotional components of library instruction initiatives is especially crucial to ensure and demonstrate that libraries are using their resources effectively to maximize student success.

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Objective – This research project sought to elucidate some of the information searching behaviours of directors/conductors of performing music ensembles when selecting repertoire for performance. Of particular focus was the kind of information needed to select repertoire and where that information was sought and acquired.

Methods – Semi-structured, guided interviews were undertaken with three conductors from varying musical ensemble forms (choral, orchestral, and wind). This included a graphical elicitation exercise following Sonnenwald’s concept of information horizon maps. A narrative analysis was done, and recurring themes were sought in the various responses to questions and created drawings.

Results – The results indicated that directors make significant use of historical and print resources in creating personal lists of repertoire for current or future use. Professional connections for discussion of new or less well-known repertoire were also very important. One particularly interesting outcome was the non-temporally bound nature of conductors’ information searching behaviour, as the current models of information behaviour primarily relate to temporally bound searches. The Internet was noted by the three conductors not as an information source in and of itself but rather as an extension of other information sources.

Conclusions – This research highlighted the atemporal nature of information searching behaviour in music directors and suggested a similar aspect in the broader information search process. It indicated a need for libraries that cater to performers to maintain historical lists of varying types (e.g., concert programs, similar lists created by other prominent members of the community, and other types of repertoire lists). Additionally, maintaining community connections and knowledge of new or newly available repertoire is important.