Academic librarians working in instruction are at the crux of professional, higher educational, and societal change. While they work with disciplinary faculty to ensure learners are critical information consumers and producers in 21st century ways, how do academic librarians develop a sense of their own identities as post-secondary instructors? Using both broad and in-depth data from practicing instruction librarians, this book identifies the catalysts and influences in academic librarians’ perspective development process. From these factors, then, instruction librarians and librarians-to-be can hone their own instructional identities and transform their teaching practices. This focus on understanding this perspective transformation process around instructional identities offers both working academic librarians and LIS graduate students an innovative way to think about their roles as educators. While many books explore the practical or how-to aspects of teaching in libraries, Transforming Academic Librarianship: How to Hone Your Instructional Identity and Adopt Best Teaching Practice takes a step up and examines how academic librarians think about or approach instruction as a part of their work. Through explicating this metacognitive process, this book helps both academic librarians and librarians-to-be to more intentionally consider their teaching practices and professional identities.

The book raises a broad scope of themes including the intellectual, psychological, cultural, definitional and structural issues that academic instruction librarians face in higher education environments. The chapters in this book represent the voices of eight instruction librarians, including two Immersion faculty members. Other perspectives come from a library dean, a library school faculty member, a library coordinator of school library media certification programs, and a director emerita from a School of Education.

"Explores the history of deficit thinking in higher education. Discusses pedagogical models that recognize students' prior knowledge and experiences. Provides a series of principles for anti-deficit teaching. Explores practical application of these principles in various academic library environments"--

Academic librarians working in instruction are at the crux of professional, higher educational, and societal change. While they work with disciplinary faculty to ensure learners are critical information consumers and producers in 21st century ways, how do academic librarians develop a sense of their own identities as post-secondary instructors? Using both broad and in-depth data from practicing instruction librarians, this book identifies the catalysts and influences in academic librarians’ perspective development process. From these factors, then, instruction librarians and librarians-to-be can hone their own instructional identities and transform their teaching practices. This focus on understanding this perspective transformation process around instructional identities offers both working academic librarians and LIS graduate students an innovative way to think about their roles as educators. While many books explore the practical or how-to aspects of teaching in libraries, Transforming Academic Librarianship: How to Hone Your Instructional Identity and Adopt Best Teaching Practice takes a step up and examines how academic librarians think about or approach instruction as a part of their work. Through explicating this metacognitive process, this book helps both academic librarians and librarians-to-be to more intentionally consider their teaching practices and professional identities.

This volume addresses an emerging yet largely unexamined strategic priority for academic and research libraries: interdisciplinarity in the academy. As colleges and universities chart new areas for knowledge creation, teaching, learning, outreach and service, libraries face challenges in developing their response to these transformational changes in higher education. The global networked society, the convergence of multiple areas of study, and the need to address major challenges that transcend any particular discipline are framing issues for twenty-first century institutions of higher education. Library leaders must seize this exciting opportunity to place the library at the center of the emerging interdisciplinary academy by creating and delivering a transformative suite of programs, services and collections. Libraries can lift their institutions to a higher plane of interdisciplinary activity by levering their place in higher education to become the hub of interdisciplinary activity, where librarians foster innovative models of teaching, learning, research, conversation, reflection, and engagement. This book offers multiple perspectives on transforming academic library programs, collections, and services to meet transformational challenges for higher education. Experienced librarians bring an interdisciplinary perspective to collection development, information literacy, digital projects, knowledge organization, services for research centers, and other timely and relevant topics.

A practical atlas of how librarians around the world are serving the dynamic academics that are today's graduate students. In four sections--One Size Does Not Fit All: Services by Discipline, Degree, and Delivery Method; Librarian Functions and Spaces Transformed to Meet Graduate Students' Needs; More Than Just Information Literacy: Workshops and Data Services; and Partnerships--readers will discover a plethora of programs and ideas gleaned directly from experienced librarians working at some of the top academic institutions, and explore the power of leveraging their library initiatives through partnerships with other university units. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, graduate students have comprised between 14 and 15 percent of all students enrolled in higher education since 2000, and are expected to exceed 3,300,000 students in 2020. While the traditional graduate student starting their fifth consecutive year of study still populates university campuses, graduate students also include seasoned professionals seeking an advanced degree to further career goals, career changers, international students, and online-only students. Each grad student comes with their own levels of expertise, challenging librarians to provide targeted help aligned with the expectations of their specific program of study. Transforming Libraries to Serve Graduate Students incorporates the experiences of librarians from across the United States, Canada, and Europe into thirty-four chapters packed with programs, best practices, and ideas readers can implement in their own libraries.