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Purpose-The old relationship of librarians serving the faculty as research assistants is long gone. The purpose of this paper is to ask, how can librarians and faculty become genuine partners in student learning and move towards the common goal of getting students to think critically? The authors discuss the need for librarians to initiate more collaborative conversations with professors in order to establish true partnerships with them and go on to describe how they did this using a strikingly and alarmingly frank approach. Building on this foundation, the authors discuss the need to shift from a service orientation to a partnership in student learning. Design/methodology/approach-The authors describe their work with the New Faculty Institute, a multi-day workshop that serves as an introduction to the university, to build upon their assertions regarding the need for instruction librarians to shift from a service orientation to a partnership with professors. Findings-The paper offers an action plan to develop and implement a value system that can guide collaboration with faculty. The pieces of the plan include articulating a teaching philosophy, craft and clarify personal policies, develop and practice responses and have confidence in your expertise. Originality/value-Developing partnerships with professors may sometimes require librarians to respond differently to requests from professors that are problematic. Doing so requires a move away from a service orientation, but towards collaborative efforts to support student learning.

Although the issues of diversity and representation are often discussed within academic librarianship in Canada and the United States, the field has made little headway in being inclusive of the Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) who work within it. If academic libraries are to become truly authentic and inclusive spaces  where BIPOC are central not only to shaping the values of a library but also to determining how those values are accomplished, we must examine the traditional ways in which libraries function. One of these traditions is a reliance on bureaucracy and its associated practices such as structured group work and meetings, which are presumed to be inherently neutral and rational ways of working. Critical examinations of bureaucracy within higher education reveal how its overadoption is absurdly at odds with the social justice–oriented missions of most libraries. Furthermore, not all who are involved in libraries are equally harmed through this overreliance on bureaucracy; this article employs Critical Race Theory to uncover the insidious and specific deleterious impacts bureaucracies can have on BIPOC library workers. The antithesis of a neutral system, bureaucracy instead functions to force assimilation into a system entrenched in whiteness.

To determine the impact of an assignment and workshop intended to increase students' information literacy skills, we conducted a quasi-experiment using a pretest-posttest assessment with undergraduate students in four sections of an introduction to developmental psychology course. Two sections (N = 81) received the assignment and instructions only, acting as the control group; two sections (N = 76) received the librarian-led workshop in addition to the assignment and instructions. Results of an independent-samples t-test revealed a significant difference on posttest scores on students' information literacy skills between those who participated in the workshop and those who did not. There was also a positive change in students' subjective views of their ability to use the library and online library resources.

Reference service via instant messaging (IM) has significant potential to benefit distance learners. There has been wide experimentation with IM to expand reference services in libraries across the US, with mixed results. Concern has been expressed that IM cannot provide the same reference experience as face-to-face interactions. One academic library, California State University, San Marcos (CSUSM) has provided local reference service via IM since 2007 and the authors will present evidence that IM can provide distance learners, as well as other library users, with greater access to librarians, while fostering high user satisfaction.