In 2017, Reference Services Review will publish a special issue on “Transfer Students and Students in Transition.” Meggan Houlihan, Claire Walker Wiley and I have contributed an article focused on the information literacy research in our systematic review of the LIS literature on international students. The issue will be published in February of 2017, and our abstract is below:
Purpose – This study was designed to explore the library and information science research on international students and information literacy published between 1990 and 2014.
Design/methodology/approach – Systematic review was used to identify and analyze publications from a 25-year period. Three major LIS databases were searched for publications meeting the study criteria, and then manual bibliography searches were performed on all those included.
Findings – Twenty-one of the 23 included publications were articles published in scholarly journals. There was a slight growth in number of publications by year between 1990 and 2014. Most of the research was conducted in the U.S., Australia, or Canada. Surveys and interviews were the most commonly used research methods, and nine of the studies used mixed methods. “Library experience” and “information seeking” emerged as the most common research topics.
Key findings presented in these articles were often related to library and non-library resources, library instruction, language issues, and research difficulties experienced by international students. Author recommendations were generally related to campus collaboration, staff training, assessment, cultural awareness, and library instruction.
Practical implications – The findings of this study will be of value for LIS practitioners who wish to develop or improve information literacy training for the international student populations on their campuses.
Originality/value – Systematic review is a useful and rigorous method that can be of value in LIS research. This paper provides and thorough review and assessment of the original research related to international students and information literacy, and summarizes the resulting recommendations.
Claire Wiley (Belmont University), Meggan Houlihan (New York University – Abu Dhabi), and I conducted a systematic review of the LIS literature about international students and academic libraries. Our findings will be published in College & Research Libraries in May of 2017, but the preprint is available here: http://crl.acrl.org/content/early/2016/03/22/crl16-877.abstract
Abstract
This study is a systematic review of the library and information science (LIS) literature related to international students and academic libraries. A systematic review involves the methodical collection and analysis of a body of literature, and is growing in popularity in the LIS field. Three well-known LIS databases were systematically searched for articles related to the topic, and manual bibliography searches conducted to find additional publications. Journal articles, book chapters, and conference papers were included or excluded based on established criteria. Findings show that articles published about international students and academic libraries have increased steadily between 1990 and 2014. The majority of authors are affiliated with universities and institutions in the United States, although an increase in represented countries is apparent. Fewer than half of the articles can be considered original research, and surveys are the most popular method for data collection. The LIS field – and international students – would benefit from further exploration of this topic, particularly from original research with practical implications.
In February 2015, North Carolina A&T hosted the inaugural Empirical Librarians Symposium. Emily Vardell, Leslie Thomson, John D. Martin III, and I led a panel on research methods for library and information science, covering focus groups, surveys, participant observation, and interviews. Resources from our panel, Conducting LIS Research: The Method in our Madness, are available on this site.
I was fortunate to be able to attend IFLA for the first time in August. This year the Congress took place in Lyon, France.
Sumayya Ahmed and I (ELIME-21 Fellows), along with SILS faculty Barbara Moran, gave a presentation about the newest ELIME-21 grant initiative. The Global Training Resources for Information Professionals (GTRIP) project is a repository of modular and interactive content meant to support ongoing training and staff development of librarians and information professionals in environments with limited resources. More information, including the full text of this paper, is available in the IFLA Library.
In addition, Josiah Drewry (Business and Economics Librarian, UNC Chapel Hill) and I shared the results of a systematic analysis of the library and information science literature, with a particular emphasis on the effects of the Arab Spring. The full text of the paper, The Effects of Political and Social Turmoil on LIS Research in the Arab World, is available through the IFLA Library as well.
Josiah Drewry (Business & Economics Librarian, UNC Chapel Hill), Mahmoud Khalifa (Library of Congress Field Office, Cairo, Egypt) and I have been working on a systematic review of the LIS literature between 2004 and 2013 in order to address the following questions:
What kinds of scholarly conversations have Middle Eastern and North African practitioners of LIS been having with each other, especially in peer-reviewed journals in Arabic and English?
What kinds of empirical research have they been conducting?
Are they addressing the recent political and economic upheaval in the region, and what of value can we relay of these discussions to interested academics outside of the field?
Are the trends in research and publishing in LIS across MENA reflective of trends across the global library and information landscape? Will our research reveal issues or trends that are specific to the region or particular countries or areas within the region?
The results of my academic integrity study have been published in Libri.
Click, A. “Taking something that is not your right”: Egyptian students’ perceptions of academic integrity. Libri: International Journal of Libraries and Information Services, 64(2), 109-123.
Abstract: This study explores the perceptions of Egyptian undergraduate students at The American University in Cairo, an American-style private university in Egypt, as related to academic integrity. The research questions were developed in order to discover how these students perceive the scholarly environment in which they learn, if they engage in dishonest behaviors, and if so, why. The qualitative results of this mixed-method study were collected via online survey and photovoice interviews, an ethnographic method in which participants take photographs in response to prompts provided by the investigator. In the survey, students were asked to define academic integrity and explain how they learned about the concept, and also respond to statements about the scholarly environment on campus. The photovoice participants took photographs in response to the following prompts, and others related to their research processes: something that shows how you feel about plagiarism, something that shows how you feel about cheating, something that shows how you learned about academic integrity. The results include the responses to 114 completed surveys, supported by the photographs and content of the eight photovoice interviews. The qualitative data was coded line by line, and larger themes were identified. Students indicate that their colleagues engage in academically dishonest behavior regularly, and pointed to poor time management, pressure for high grades, and helping friends as reasons for this. The paper argues that academic librarians are in a unique position to promote academic integrity on campus, and provides some suggestions for advocacy.
I have been collaborating with Claire Walker, Research & Instruction Librarian at Belmont University, to conduct a study on student perceptions of academic integrity. Specifically, we were interested in examining how and why students from different cultures differ in their perspectives on these issues. We collected data via online questionnaire from students at a private Christian university in the American South and students at a private American-style university in Egypt, and presented our findings in a talk called “Motivations, definitions, and the ‘plagiarism trap’: perceptions of academic integrity across cultures.”
I was selected as a member of the first cohort of Leadership Development Scholars by the UNC Graduate School. The program involves the implementation of a proposed professional development project, participation in a leadership workshop, and the creation of a personalized leadership development plan. I will be organizing and moderating a panel discussion with prominent leaders in library and information science, which will take place in March 2014.
The AMICAL (American International Consortium of Academic Libraries) 2013 Annual Conference took place June 12-15 at John Cabot University in Rome, Italy. I gave a talk titled “Cross-Campus Collaboration for Academic Integrity,” addressing the ways that librarians, teaching faculty, administrators, and IT staff, can collaborate to ensure that undergraduate and graduate students understand academic integrity and develop necessary research and writing skills.