Academic library as an essential service on a campus during emergencies such as
fire and severe weather (rain, snow, floods)
Accreditation and the role of the academic library in undergraduate, graduate, and
other teaching programs (adult, community, distance education)
Acquisition and deployment of technology in the library environment
Adaptive equipment technology for supporting handicapped persons in the library
environment
Administration and leadership
cooperatives, networks
of
interlibrary
loan
departments,
consortia,
Advances in search engine technology and their impacts on libraries
Analyses and your libraryÂ’s use of an analysis, e.g., cost-benefit analysis, gap
analysis, customer-satisfaction analysis, needs analysis, root cause analysis, SWOT
analysis, what-if analysis)
Art work display in the academic library to promote spirituality or to support liberal
arts and the humanities among students/faculty
Articulation of an information policy for a campus
Bar codes and RFID tags: types, library and special collection applications, use in
library asset tracking
Benchmarking as a means to achieve outcomes; your libraryÂ’s use of
benchmarking and the results, problems, opportunities
Campus community's perception of the library as a hospitable environment for
reading, study, and research
Challenge of providing library services with shrinking resources; doing more with
what you have to improve programs, services, and collections
Challenges and opportunities in migrating to Web-based information services
Challenges of implementing technology, including deployment, training, upgrading
Change management in the library environment for organizational renewal
Changing nature of circulation in numbers and ways to stimulate print and media
circulation
Changing nature of library space requirements to meet student and collection
requirements
Changing nature of reference questions in type and number
Changing role and value of union lists with the availability of electronic full-text
journal databases
Changing role of the librarian from collection development specialists to specialists
who develop pathfinder guides (subject, topic) to harness the Internet's unstructured
free-form information
Clientele expectations as exacerbated by e-business practices: effect on library's
business practices, business alliances and partnerships, vendor relationships, oneto-one relationship management with patrons
Clientele expectations: librarians generally view our customers/patrons through the
prism of our collections. What are effective strategies for flipping this to see our
collections through our customer's eyes?
Collaboration opportunities (or reports of such collaborations) with other
educational/cultural institutions such as colleges and universities, historical societies,
museums, professional or trade associations, public schools K-12, social agencies,
etc.
Collection development strategies for academic programs
Common culture created/supported/enhanced by the academic library on campus
Communications plan as a tool for developing community relations to connect with
faculty and administrators, e.g., how to write, how to use, how to budget for
expenditures for advertising, etc.
Consortia delivery systems for continuing education, books and journals, technical
support services, training
Cooperative purchasing and shared collections between and among libraries
Coping with tight budgets by eliminating the overlap between print and electronic
subscriptions
Copyright issues with interlibrary loan and electronic reserves
Core collections for children's literature in a higher education library that supports a
teacher education program of instruction
Core digital resources for small and/or medium size libraries (academic, public,
special)
Core technology and/or emerging technology trends in the library environment
Cost or time study of library programs, services, and collections, including
description of the methodology and outcomes at your library
Cost-drivers and the criteria for selecting cost drivers for various library activities,
e.g., automation, communications, facilities and physical plant, human resources,
public services, public and community relations, technical services, technology
Dealing strategies and outcomes for the difficult patron in the library environment
Describing and giving examples that illustrate the difference between adequate and
excellent library service(s)
Developing a written library business plan that addresses business/technical goals,
platform/storage technology requirements, and infrastructure topology
Developing an annual academic agenda for the library, including benchmarks and
performance measures
Difference between serving students as customers (providing them a product) and
serving students as learners whose job is to learn how to use the library
Digitization of local collections and its impact on scholarship in the library
Discussion of information literacy as an educational reform for utilizing technology in
the curriculum
Discussion of one or more challenges and/or opportunities in some area of
librarianship or information science
Effective allocations strategies for collection development among academic and nonacademic units in an academic, public, or special library
Effective budgeting strategies linked to outcomes
Effective library support for distance education programs; strategies for equalizing
access to library resources for on-campus students and distance education learners
Effectiveness of state and federal library grant programs (or any single program)
Efficiencies achieved through consortium/consortia affiliation
Electronic library reserves, e.g., part of the OPAC or through commercial software
such as Blackboard
Electronic resources and their impact on the academic library as the social and
intellectual heart of the campus
Electronic resources and their impact on the academic library: library visits,
reference service, and circulation
Ethics of information
Evaluating a library and useful performance measurements for evaluation
Evaluating the effectiveness of bibliographic instruction with a focus on the student
and/or teacher
Fund raising and development programs for libraries
GALILEO and how its impact on its users and the library as the social and
intellectual heart of the campus
Game theory’s “prisoner’s dilemma” applied to academic library problems or
situations
Good faith communication as an essential component for strong employee relations
Hub library networks
Human resource requirements have changed in the academic library. Describe how
staff retooling is happening, costs, opportunities, challenges since this is not a
downsizing strategy; rather, it is a strategy to allow the library to be responsive to
changes in its environment
Identifying the "sizzle" in the library's programs, services, and collections
Impact of demographic and cultural changes on library services
Impact of full-text databases on interlibrary loan services
Impact of library budget shifts toward electronic resource access
Implementing a new integrated information system in the library environment
Implications for the library as accreditation shifts from an emphasis on library
resources to information literacy
Integrated information Systems offer advantages and disadvantages. Identify these
and expand on the pros and cons of library managers supporting single
management systems since one size rarely fits all needs, uses
Intellectual property and copyright. Analysis of the libraryÂ’s role in assisting in
understanding intellectual property in a college or university environment
Intellectual property and copyright. Collection development and intellectual property
and copyright in terms of topics such as what primary and secondary resources
should the library own, best book and journal titles on the topic, identification of
commercial databases featuring the topic
Intellectual property and copyright. Collection development in terms of topics such as
what primary and secondary resources should the library own, best book and journal
titles on the topic, identification of commercial databases featuring the topic
Intellectual property and copyright. Create a summary or annotation of the best
websites, or legal research guides, or colleges/universities that have a position
devoted to this topic, or list of blogs, or newsletter
Intellectual property and copyright. For intellectual property and copyright, create a
summary or annotation of the best websites, or legal research guides, or
colleges/universities that have a position devoted to this topic, or list of blogs, or
newsletter.
Intellectual property and copyright. Listing and summary of the major cases in the
area of intellectual property and copyright argued in front of courts, such as the U.S.
Supreme Court, U.S. Court of Appeals, etc.
Intellectual property and copyright. Listing and summary or annotation of the major
cases in the area of intellectual property and copyright argued in front of courts, such
as the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Court of Appeals, etc.
Intellectual property and copyright. The libraryÂ’s role in assisting in understanding
intellectual property in a college or university environment.
Interlibrary loan of specialized materials such as audiovisuals, CDs, DVDs, VHSs,
items from e-subscriptions, legal materials, medical materials
Interlibrary loan service enhancement through use of technologies such as Ariel,
Illiad, BlackBoard, or other open-source software
Interlibrary loan statistics used for acquisitions (books, journals, digital, audiovisual
materials) or collections management (discarding materials)
Internet-based services, products, technologies and their impact on library
management, service, and utilization: challenges and/or methodology to meet patron
needs as libraries migrate to a digital/virtual environment
Knowledge management and its application for developing a learning organization
LibrarianshipÂ’s changing definition: In 2001, Steven L. Baker is credited with writing
that librarianship is the discipline that promotes an integrated approach to
preserving, identifying, capturing, evaluating, retrieving, and sharing the significant
knowledge and information assets of society. In 1964 Louis Shores wrote that
librarianship is the profession dedicated to the preservation, dissemination,
investigation, and interpretation of the knowledge most significant to mankind.
Libraries and life-long learning: what this means and steps to take to bring about
Library as place and access mechanisms to repositories of collections whereas large
research libraries continue to struggle with providing print-centric and digital access
to information
Library implications of the growing power of information technology to transform the
means of research, teaching, and scholarly communication
Library in higher education as an economic engine (agricultural stimulation,
company/corporate creation and development, human capital development of
hundreds of thousands of people, stimulation and enhancement of the lives of
people within its sphere of influence)
Library instruction and training for students and faculty who are remote to the
campus
Library presence in spaces such as the campus portal, Facebook, iTunes, learning
management systems such as Blackboard, MySpace, etc.
Library search tools in environments such as learning management systems (e.g.,
Blackboard) or social network infrastructure
Library services for disabled persons: facilities, equipment, funding, staffing
Library services for virtual high schools, virtual colleges and universities, home
schooled students
Library services in a linguistically diverse community
Library staff as emergency responders, e.g., organizing and running resident
information centers during storms and emergencies
LibraryÂ’s value to society in digitalizing unique collections
LibraryÂ’s value, strengths, and shortcomings in an electronic society?
Library's changing role in the information economy
Library's effective learning environment and its importance (e.g., research,
socializing in the use of information resources, promotion of a common culture, safe
and relatively quiet study hall, a social sphere for meeting people and being seen,
etc.). Many librarians have focused on collections and information technology to the
exclusion of the many other positive things that take place in an academic library)
Literacy programs in the library environment
Management and operation of information systems
Marginalization of the library (academic, public, special)
Marketing of library services, i.e., positioning the library as a destination for research,
learning, and friends
Maximizing the value of (new, emerging) information technology in the library
environment
Measuring the quality of library services
Metrics for evaluating library performance and services and when to use them -such as input and output measurements, quality assurance measurements, impact
and outcome measurements – should both qualitative and quantitative components
be included and how
Mobile library services (problems, challenges, opportunities, technology) through
using smart devices with small screens such as laptops, Pocket PCs, BlackBerrys,
Palms, and data-enabled cell phones
Models of library service through the use of computers, networks, and the Internet
Open-access data/collections and its value for providing context to local collections
Outsourcing of services (cataloging, janitorial, reference, serial check-in, etc.)
Pareto's 80-20 rule applied to library problems and situations, and application of
Chris AndersonÂ’s The Long Tail (2003) as a statistical concept applies to library
collections
Position paper on a controversial topic, e.g., do we need academic libraries? or that
libraries of the future were distinguished from one another only by their ownership of
sole copies of locally-produced digital content not accessible elsewhere since books
and journals were accessible digitally via fee databases and content publishers
Programming to attract students to the academic library (art exhibitions, book swaps,
comfortable furniture, expresso bars, hosting campus meetings and conferences,
lectures, poetry readings)
Providing academic library services in an environment where faculty are increasingly
teaching a curriculum that draws less and less on library resources
Quality assurance, efficiency studies, and best practices – how they impact the
library
Ranganathan’s (1931) fifth law of library science is “A library is a growing
organism”; explain the meaning today as libraries become part of growing
networked organisms such as OCLC
Renovating the library specifically to enrich its atmosphere to attract students
Restructuring access on Web pages to the libraryÂ’s programs, services, and
collections on the basis of frequency-of-use rather than library organizational
structure or alphabetical arrangement
Rethinking the academic library's functions not to provide print collections but for its
media center and computer labs for access to digital environment
Revenue opportunities for libraries, e.g., advertisements on computer screens
Role of consortium membership for expanding access and resources
Role of electronic text-based collections with multimedia content
Role of the homepage as “The” platform for delivering library programs, services,
and collections
Role of the library as an information resource in globalization
Role of the library as an information resource in promoting human rights
Role of the library in the ubiquitous computer (information technology) environment
Search engines: how those that charge allow those that pay to rise to the top
Search engines: making the libraryÂ’s Web pages (page titles, descriptions, article
summaries) more friendly for indexing and retrieval by Google and Yahoo!
Shared storage facilities
Significance and strategic value of written procedures and standard operating
procedures (SOP) for library operations
Strategic communicationÂ’s plan for enhancing the role of the library in its parent
organization
Strategic planning in the library environment
Strategic role of the library on the college/university campus
Strategies and applications for bring bibliographic instruction into the classroom
using Web-based resources
Strategy for libraries to evolve as a modern technological workplaces (staff skills and
training issues)
Student acceptance of print vs. electronic resources and observations regarding
students being willing to wait for digital resources that may be temporarily
unavailable, such as the server is down, rather than use print indexes, abstracts, or
journal articles
Students in the academic library: client, customer, or patron and the difference it
makes in how we refer to our users and community of student/faculty scholars
Successful outsourcing activities: what they are, why they were successfully
outsourced
Survey of consortia across the country: what they do, how they are organized, who
belongs
Survey of libraries for emergency or disaster plans, e.g., fire, weather (hurricane,
snow, tornado), flood, etc. (Model paper is by Kalyan, S., Xue-Ming Bao, and Marta
M. Deyrup. "Academic Libraries' Emergency Plans for Inclement Weather," Library
Administration and Management 15(4), 223-229, 2001.)
Survey of students and faculty as part of a quality assessment program
Survey of where students turn when they have a paper to write and what type(s) of
resources they use
SWOT (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats) analysis methodology and
interpretation for an academic, health science, public, or special library
Three fundamental problems that libraries must solve in the next five years
(identification of those problems and how to approach?)
Trends (administration, budget, collections, customer service, staffing, staff
supervision and management, technology)
Use of specific electronic resources (e.g., Dow-Jones, Gale Resources, etc.) in
support of an academic program
Value and importance of library websites and importance to be as simple as Google
to navigate
Value and ongoing usefulness of book collections in the library in face of trends
toward electronic collections
Value or significance of remote access to the library's electronic resources
(academic, municipal, public libraries)
Value proposition statement for libraries: what it is and how it is best determined and
articulated
Virtual reference: what it is, how to do it, examples, types of questions
Web-based bibliographic instruction
White paper on a topic, such as outcomes assessment, future of cataloging,
interlibrary loan, e-journal usage, fines for students and faculty, etc.
Wireless connectivity: its transformative impact on the academic library
Writing a plan (action plan for some activity, advertising plan, communications plan,
gap analysis and customer service quality plan, marketing plan, strategic plan,
technology plan) for an academic library