News reports and well-publicized government studies have led to a popular perception that reading is an endangered activity, particularly among youth. In this study we surveyed college students, librarians, and college writing instructors about students’ attitudes toward reading for pleasure, examine barriers to voluntary reading among college students, and explore academic libraries’ potential role in promoting reading. Our findings suggest that students have a far higher interest in reading than is typically believed and recommend steps academic librarians can take to encourage reading for lifelong learning.

This study investigates the perceived impact of future e-book collections on student research and recreational reading habits at our institution through three questions: how students currently use library print collections, how students use e-books, and how these factors impact student perception of the effects of future library e-books on their research and recreational reading behavior. Students express a fairly high interest in e-books, although not without raising significant concerns. While students appreciate the ease of access provided by e-books, many imagine that research would be more difficult using e-books. Results will help the library better evaluate e-book options and navigate possible issues related to implementation.ike academic librarians everywhere, librarians at our institution are evaluating emerging e-book options for our collection. However, anecdotal information, bolstered by informal student surveys, has suggested that a significant number of our students prefer print books to e-books. For example, students enrolled in a course taught by one of the authors, Books and Culture, conducted surveys of fellow students. The most recent survey of 175 students, conducted in the first week of January 2013, found that between 5 and 6 percent of students would choose an e-book over a printed book, up from 3 to 4 percent two years earlier.Since our library offers very few e-books at this time, we found ourselves wondering how students saw themselves using e-books if we added them to the collection. To explore this question, we sought to understand first how students use library print books to see if using the library's print collection informed student perceptions of ebook use. Would students prefer books read for pleasure electronically? What about books used for research? How do students imagine using e-books might impact their research behavior? To better understand whether and how our students might use e-books if we were to add them to our collection, we conducted a study with the following questions in mind:• How do students currently use our current print collection for both research and recreational purposes? • How do students use e-books for these purposes, if at all? • How do students predict that the availability of e-books in our collection might impact their research and recreational reading habits?

In this personal exploration of information literacy instruction at one institution, I look back at three decades of my involvement with pedagogy and how our local practices have reflected national conversations about the field. Anxiety about the identity and purpose of academic libraries in higher education has shaped the ways we have conceptualized and argued for the value of IL, yet in spite of spirited efforts to reformulate our purpose, many of the challenges we face have consistently resisted solutions.

This paper reports results from a mixed-methods study about how college students engage with news when questions of credibility and “fake news” abound in the U.S. Findings are based on 5,844 online survey responses, one open-ended survey question (N=1,252), and 37 follow-up telephone interviews with students enrolled at 11 U.S. colleges and universities. More than two-thirds of respondents had received news from at least five pathways to news during the previous week; often their news came from discussions with peers, posts on social media platforms, online newspaper sites, discussions with professors, or news feeds. The classroom was an influential incubator for news habits; discussions of news provided relevant connections to curricular content as well as guidance for navigating a complex and crowded online media landscape. Respondents majoring in the arts and humanities, social sciences, and business administration were far more likely to get news from their professors than were students in computer science or engineering. The interplay between unmediated and mediated pathways to news underscored the value of the socialness of news; discussions with peers, parents, and professors helped students identify which stories they might follow and trust. Opportunities and strategies are identified for preparing students to gather and evaluate credible news sources, first as students and then as lifelong learners, based on the assumption that instructors discussing news in class can demonstrate intentionally, or unintentionally, that familiarity with news is a social practice and a form of civic engagement.

Academic librarians and scholars must be aware of issues and new developments affecting trade publishing in order to play a role in shaping its future. This article reports on the current condition of trade publishing and its future prospects based on interviews with editors, publishers, agents, and others involved in the industry.