Jim Kinnie’s research while affiliated with University of Rhode Island and other places

In the ongoing evolution of the academic library, embedded librarianship has become an important topic of debate across levels and departments. This book delves into the concept, examining everything from theory to best practices. Is the embedded librarian an equal partner in the course, or is the librarian perceived as a “value-added” extra? What is the place of technology in this effort? Is there a line librarians should not cross? Taking into account both theory and practice to discuss multiple facets of the subject, Embedded Librarianship: What Every Academic Librarian Should Know thoroughly examines these questions and more from the perspectives of experienced embedded librarian contributors who have worked in higher education settings. The chapters illuminate the benefits and challenges of embedding, explain the planning required to set up an embedded course, identify the different forms of embedding, and consider information literacy instruction in various contexts. Readers who will benefit from this work include not only academic librarians but any professor who wants their students to be able to do better research in their fields.

This article explores various models of online faculty development programs as described in the literature, and finds that they fall into a wide range of models from those that are highly structured to more organically grown examples. The Online Teaching Fellows program at the University of Rhode Island is shown to be an example of an internally-created course that follows best practices of both the structured and organic models. The author's experience as a participant in the course is described illustrating how the lessons learned informed his strategies for effective teaching in an online credit course in information literacy.

This paper compares the results of a comprehensive exam taken by undergraduates enrolled in face-to-face and online sections of a three–credit course in information literacy. Authors discuss choosing, adapting, and implementing the comprehensive exam. Questions are mapped to the ACRL Competency Standards for Information Literacy for Higher Education to assess the effectiveness of the course. Preliminary results indicate that online students performed slightly better than their face-to-face counterparts.

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to describe the development of a series of forums on issues of the information age, created to address ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standard Five. Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents a case study, including citations to relevant literature. Findings – The paper provides a technique for addressing ACRL Information Literacy Standard Five, examples of topics, discussion of logistics, and value to students. Originality/value – The ideas and methods presented in the paper may be used by other librarians to arrange forums at their own institutions. A checklist to assist in preparation is also included.

This article describes the process of converting materials from a traditionally delivered three credit undergraduate course on Information Literacy into the WebCT environment for distance learners. The 3-unit course content was reorganized to fit a 10-week summer session. A weekly schedule was imposed using elements from the traditional classroom: lecture notes, class exercises and participation, homework assignments, projects and exams.