Jennifer Ward is Associate Professor and Outreach Services Librarian at Egan Library. She publishes in information literacy, collaboration, teacher education, and action research. Find Jennifer's profile on ResearchGate and on Google Scholar

Recent Submissions

  • Building Community: Synergy and Empowerment through Staff Development and Marketing in a Small Rural Academic Library

    Ward, Jennifer; Wilkes, Bethany (Collaborative Librarianship, 2016)
    This paper presents two collaborative programs at a small academic library that leverage the insights, engagement, and interests of our most important asset: our staff. Two new library committees, the Staff Training Advisory Group and the Marketing Team, extended planning, accountability, and partnerships to paraprofessional staff members. The onset and associated activities of these two committees yielded not only direct results in terms of staff training programs and marketing initiatives, but also resulted in creating a more collaborative culture and shared purpose in our library. This paper examines how the overlap of these two committees created a convergence that fostered excitement about the library, interest in improving library roles, and furthering library initiatives. By working together, and with our university community, we developed solid, popular programs in addition to cultivating a more intentional, thoughtful, and inclusive approach to our work and, ultimately, to supporting our university community.
  • Librarian and Faculty Collaborative Instruction: A Phenomenological Self-Study

    Brown, Jennifer; Duke, Thomas (Elsevier, 2005)
    Several models of librarian and faculty collaboration are found in the professional librarian literature. The literature on collaborative self-study research in higher education settings indicates collaborative self-study research can improve interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches to teaching and research and facilitate the transfer of knowledge. A research librarian and assistant professor of special education conducted a phenomenological self-study to examine their multiple roles as researchers, collaborators, and educators who collaborated to develop, implement, and evaluate distance-delivered instructional services for public school teachers who live and work in remote, rural, and Native communities throughout the state of Alaska. Several themes emerged from this study, including: (a) the authors’ interdisciplinary and collaborative efforts resulted in increased opportunities to team teach and conduct future collaborative research; (b) the authors struggled to communicate effectively with students via audio-conference; and (c) the beliefs and practices of both authors were transformed by their participation in this self-study. The study suggests implications for further and improved interdisciplinary collaboration between librarians and faculty. The authors believe this collaborative approach to self-study research facilitates reflective and authentic teaching and research for academic librarians working in collaboration with teaching faculty.
  • Staff Engagement for Cohesion

    Ward, Jennifer; Wilkes, Bethany (Association of College and Research Libraries, 2016)
    This chapter in a book on small and rural libraries looks at issues around why staff engagement is a concern. We discuss the barriers to staff engagement and the role professional development plays in lowering the barriers. We look at events programming and the library's impact on other campus departments. Concludes with advice to other small academic libraries on developing a staff engagement plan.
  • Preparing Information Literate Teachers: A Review of the Literature

    Ward, Jennifer Diane; Duke, Thomas Scott (Elsevier, 2010)