Dr. Chow’s research with his students entitled, “The Information Needs of Virtual Users: A Study of Second Life Libraries” has been accepted for publication in Library Quarterly, one of the top journals in the LIS field. The students who collaborated with Dr. Chow as part of an independent study include Caroline Baity, Marilyn Zamarripa, Pam Chappell, David Rachlin, and Curtis Vinson.
The major findings of the study were that the overall usability of developing and maintaining virtual library branches in Second Life of traditional libraries was low as both library peers …

Study in Reference and User Services Quarterly
Dr. Chow’s research with UNCG alumna Becky Croxton entitled, “Information Seeking Behavior and Reference Medium Preferences: Differences among Faculty, Staff, and Students” is the featured research study in ALA’s Reference and User Services Quarterly (RUSQ) spring issue coming out on March 31, 2012. The study examined the preferences of university faculty, staff, and students in using virtual reference services at an academic library. Statistically significant differences were found: Faculty and staff preferred email while students preferred chat/instant messaging. The primary factors for virtual …

Nora Bird and co-authors Michael Crumpton, Melynda Ozan, and Tim Williams have published an article in the January-March, 2012 (v. 17, n.1) issue of Journal of Business & Finance Librarianship. The article, entitled “Workplace Information Literacy: A Neglected Priority for Community College Libraries,” makes recommendations for working with workforce and vocational faculty to design meaningful information literacy programs for students in the technical trades (see abstract below).
Abstract
Community and technical colleges have long been sites for educating two groups of students: those going on to baccalaureate education and those seeking degrees …

Billie Mace Durham and Joy Latta Retire

Billie Durham
Billie Mace Durham has served as School Library Media Program Coordinator and Clinical Assistant Professor at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG), 2008-11.For more information, or to leave comments please visit: http://lisforum.wordpress.com/faculty/billie-mace-durham

Joy Latta
Joye Manning Latta, an Independent Educational Consultant, served as an Adjunct Faculty member at the UNCG Department of Library and Information Studies from 2003 to Fall 2011.For more information, or to to leave comments please visit:

Dr. Chow co-authors book with Jackson Library Dean of Technology Tim Bucknall

Out this month is a new book, Library Technology and User Services, by Anthony Chow and Tim Bucknall, which prepares libraries to integrate technology into their institutions with organizational and user services in mind. A sample chapter and table of contents are available, and the book may be purchased through Chandos or Amazon. Below follows a Q&A with Dr. Chow about the book.

Q&A with Anthony Chow about new book
1. How did the idea for the book and the …

Chow will present Nov. 9 and 10 and broadcast his presentations through uStream

Dr. Chow will be giving three presentations in Jacksonville, FL at the Association for Educational Communications and Technologies (AECT) conference.
He will be broadcasting and recording all three of his presentations through his uStream channel. He invites anyone in the LIS community to join him live for the following:
1) Educational Informatics: Designing Performance-based Measurement Systems for Rapid Response Learning Environments
Group: Division on Systemic Change
Scheduled Time: …

Nora Bird to co-present NCLA Workshop on Community College Librarianship
On Tuesday, Oct. 4 from 9 am-4 pm, faculty member Nora Bird and Mike Crumpton
of Jackson Library will lead a pre-conference workshop for community college
librarianship. Bird and Crumpton, who both worked as community college librarians
before entering the university setting, have explored the topic over the past two years
through a survey, which gathered responses from 150 community college librarians,
and from a focus group of community college librarians.
“We’ve been having these really great conversations with people about what their
challenges are, and so we …

Beth Martin and colleagues to present at NCAEA Conference on Friday, September 23 at UNC Charlotte
For the Fall 2011 North Carolina Adult Education Association Conference on the campus of UNC Charlotte, Beth Martin will present an upcoming study that she will be conducting with colleagues Shanna Coles, the Senior Program Manager of Extended Academic Programs at UNCC, and Lisa Nickel, the Head of Access Services at J. Murrey Atkins Library.
“We have been friends and colleagues for a while,” Martin says, “and during the course of conversation we realized we all …

Faculty Activities: Dr. Anthony Chow
Dr. Anthony Chow has been active over the summer in all aspects of research, teaching, and service:
Dr. Chow completed one book, two book chapters, two articles, one article review, and six presentations accepted:
Book and book chapters (3):

Chow, A. & Bucknall, T. (2011). Library Technology and User Services: Planning, Integration, and Usability Engineering. Cambridge, UK: Chandos. Overview | Amazon

Chow, A. (2011). Synchronous vs asynchronous interaction: access, convenience, and content. In Advancing Library and Information Science book series. Hershey, PA: IGI-Global
Chow, A. (2012). The usability of digital information environments. In Evans & Baker’s …

Conjoint processing of time-compressed narration in multimedia instruction: The effects on recall, but not recognition.
By William “Bill” Kealy and A. D. Ritzhaupt
Journal of Educational Computing Research
vol.44(2), 2011
pages 203-217
Abstract
Although previous research shows verbal recall of time-compressed narration is significantly enhanced when it is accompanied by a representational adjunct picture (Ritzhaupt & Barron, 2008), the reason for this increased performance remains unclear. One explanation, explored in the current study, is based on the Conjoint Retention Hypothesis (CRH), which posits that mentally stored visual information can serve as a secondary retrieval cue …