Cara Bradley

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10294/2594



As the Research & Scholarship Librarian at the University of Regina, Cara Bradley’s primary responsibility is to support graduate students and faculty researchers. She is also an active researcher, with interests in information literacy in the disciplines, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and scholarly communication. She has presented at conferences across Canada, the U.S. and the U.K., and published peer-reviewed journal articles on these topics. In 2014, she received the Canadian Library Association’s Robert H. Blackburn Distinguished Paper Award. She is also the author of a book, Plagiarism Education and Prevention: A Subject-Driven, Case-Based Approach (Chandos, 2011), and is co-editor of the book The Grounded Instruction Librarian: Participating in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, which will be published by the Association of College and Research Libraries in 2019.

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    Academic Librarians, Open Access, and the Ethics of Care
    (University of Regina, Dr. John Archer Library, 2021)
    This paper explores the value of applying the ethics of care to scholarly communications work, particularly that of open-access (OA) librarians. The ethics of care is a feminist philosophical perspective that sees in the personal a new way to approach other facets of life, including the political and the professional. Care, in this context, is broadly construed as “a species of activity that includes everything we do to maintain, contain, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible” (Fisher & Tronto, 1990, p. 40). Joan Tronto outlined four elements of care: attentiveness, responsibility, competence, and responsiveness, and highlighted the value of care beyond the domestic sphere (1993). The ethics of care values care and relationships as instructive ways of framing and examining work, and has been applied in diverse disciplines, including education, nursing, social work, and even business. Several LIS professionals have considered the ethics of care in the context of library technologies (Henry, 2016) and digital humanities (Dohe, 2019), among others. The ethics of care can also provide inspiration for OA librarians as we think about the scope and nature of our work. What could open access librarians learn from the ethics of care? How might our practice change or evolve with the ethics of care as an underpinning philosophy? Who do we include in our circle of care while we undertake our work? The ethics of care provides a more expansive way to think about OA librarianship.
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    Archer Library Information Literacy Instruction Program
    (Dr. John Archer Library, University of Regina, 2007-01-17) Phelps, Charles; Bradley, Cara; Magee, Elizabeth; Perry, Ed; Rothecker, Jennifer
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    Campus Disconnect: Academic Libraries and the Information Needs, Skills, and Behaviors of Non-Teaching University Staff
    (University of Regina, Dr. John Archer Library, 2009-03-13) Bradley, Cara
    Paper originally presented at the ACRL 14th National Conference, March 13, 2009 in Seattle, Washington. This paper reports the results of a study that explores the information needs, skills, and behaviors of university non-teaching staff and the role of the academic library in addressing these needs.
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    Chapter C: Region North America
    (Association of College and Research Libraries, 2017) Bradley, Cara
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    Information Literacy Articles in Science Pedagogy Journals
    (Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, 2013) Bradley, Cara
    This study sought to determine the extent to which articles about information literacy-related topics have been published in science pedagogy journals. It also explored the nature of these references, in terms of authorship, Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) information literacy competency standards addressed, and degree of emphasis on information literacy topics. In addition to characterizing information literacy in the science pedagogy literature, the study presents a methodology that can be adopted by future efforts to explore representations of information literacy in the literature of additional academic disciplines.
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    Information literacy in the programmatic university accreditation standards of select professions in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia
    (Journal of Information Literacy, 2013-06) Bradley, Cara
    University accreditation schemes, in some form or other, are ubiquitous among English-language speaking countries around the world. Some countries employ national or regional accreditation processes, and a few authors have explored the role of information literacy in these institution-wide accreditation practices. Little, however, has been written about information literacy in the context of accreditation standards developed by various professions to regulate the quality of university programmes educating future professionals in the field. This paper investigates the potential of these professional accreditation standards to advance the information literacy cause and give it a higher profile on campus. It undertakes a qualitative content analysis of the professional accreditation standards for three professions-- nursing, social work, and engineering –in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia to determine: • If (and in what context) the term information literacy is used in the accreditation criteria • Other terms/language used in the accreditation criteria to describe information literacy and associated skills and competencies • Correlations between outcomes outlined in the accreditation documents and information literacy competencies outlined by the library profession The study identifies trends, both within specific professions, and within the documents produced by each of the four countries under consideration. It reports significant variation in the language used in the professions to describe the concept of “information literacy,” highlighting the alternative language used in the various professions to describe this ability. The study also maps outcomes outlined in the accreditation documents to the Association of College and Research Libraries’ (ACRL) Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education (USA), in order to identify areas of overlapping concern. In doing so, this study helps familiarise librarians with the accreditation standards in several subjects, and provides a model for librarians to use in analyzing accreditation standards in other subject areas in order to advance information literacy on their campuses.
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    Information literacy policy development in Canada: Is it time?
    (Partnership : the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research;, 2013) Bradley, Cara
    This article examines policy issues related to information literacy in Canada. It provides some background on the information literacy concept, reflecting on popular definitions offered by American, British, and Australian library associations, before advocating for a broader definition that views information literacy as a human right. Information literacy is also considered in relationship to the proliferation of other “literacies,” such as digital, web, media, and information technology, that are the subject of increased advocacy and attention from interest groups and educators. The ongoing need for improved information literacy levels is analyzed not only in the context of inputs (the increasing complexity of the information environment) but also in terms of potential personal, social, and economic outcomes that can be realized through widespread information literacy education efforts. The paper argues that information literacy must become a priority not only among academic librarians but also school, public, and special librarians, as well as others outside of the library sector, if significant improvements in information literacy levels are to be realized. Such a coordinated approach can only be achieved in the context of policies that require, and adequately support, widespread efforts at improving information literacy levels. After a review of the ad-hoc state of information literacy education in Canada today, this paper analyzes information literacy-related policy development efforts in Canada to date in the four arenas where one would expect to see such activity: the Government of Canada, provincial governments, library associations, and other stakeholder groups. This article aims to start a wide-reaching discussion about information literacy and associated policy issues in Canada.
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    Information Use Skills in the Engineering Program Accreditation Criteria of Four Countries
    (Taylor & Francis, 2013) Bradley, Cara
    The need for 21st century information skills in engineering practice, combined with the importance for engineering programs of meeting accreditation requirements, suggests that it may be worthwhile to explore the potential for closer alignment between librarians and their work with information literacy competencies to assist in meeting accreditation standards and graduating students with high-level information skills. This article explores whether and how information use skills are reflected in engineering program accreditation standards of four countries: Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Results indicate that there is significant overlap between the information use skills required of students by engineering accreditation processes and librarians’ efforts to develop information literacy competencies in students, despite differences in terms used to describe these skills. Increased collaboration between engineering faculty and librarians has the potential to raise student information literacy levels and fulfil the information use-related requirements of accreditation processes.
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    Recommendations for Instant Messsaging Virtual Reference Service : Archer Library, University of Regina
    (Dr. John Archer Library, University of Regina, 2006-07-31) Bradley, Cara
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    Research Support Priorities of and Relationships among Librarians and Research Administrators: A Content Analysis of the Professional Literature
    (Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, 2018) Bradley, Cara
    Objective - This research studied the recent literature of two professions, library and information studies (LIS) and research administration (RA), to map the priorities and concerns of each with regard to research support. Specifically, the research sought to answer these research questions: (1) What are the similarities and differences emerging from the LIS and RA literatures on research support? (2) How do librarians and research administrators understand and engage with each other’s activities through their professional literatures? (3) Do Whitchurch’s (2008a, 2008b, 2015) concepts of bounded-cross-boundary-unbounded professionals and theory of the “third space” provide a useful framework for understanding research support? Methods - The research method was a content analysis of journal articles on research-related topics published in select journals in the LIS (n = 195) and RA (n = 95) fields from 2012-2017. The titles and abstracts of articles to be included were reviewed to guide the creation of thematic coding categories. The coded articles were then analyzed to characterize and compare the topics and concerns addressed by the literature of each profession. Results - Only two (2.2%) RA articles referred to librarians and libraries in their exploration of research support topics, while six (3.1%) LIS articles referred to the research office or research administrators in a meaningful way. Of these six, two focused on undergraduate research programs, two on research data management, and two on scholarly communications. Thematic coding revealed five broad topics that appeared repeatedly in both bodies of literature: research funding, research impact, research methodologies, research infrastructure, and use of research. However, within these broad categories, the focus varied widely between the professions. There were also several topics that received considerable attention in the literature of one field without a major presence in that of the other, including research collaboration in the RA literature, and institutional repositories, research data management, citation analysis or bibliometrics, scholarly communication, and open access in the LIS literature. Conclusion - This content analysis of the LIS and RA literature provided insight into the priorities and concerns of each profession with respect to research support. It found that, even in instances where the professions engaged on the same broad topics, they largely focused on different aspects of issues. The literature of each profession demonstrated little awareness of the activities and concerns of the other. In Whitchurch’s (2008a) taxonomy, librarians and research administrators are largely working as “bounded” professionals, with occasional forays into “cross-boundary” activities (p. 377). There is not yet evidence of “unbounded” professionalism or a move to a “third space” of research support activity involving these professions (Whitchurch, 2015, p. 85). Librarians and research administrators will benefit from a better understanding of the current research support landscape and new modes of working, like the third space, that could prove transformative.
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    The scholarship of teaching and learning: Opportunities for librarians
    (College and Research Libraries News, 2009) Bradley, Cara
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    SOLO, the Saskatchewan Online Library Orientation
    (Dr. John Archer Library, University of Regina, 2007-01-15) Bradley, Cara; Romane, Leeanne; Garreck, Willadell; University of Regina. Centre for Academic Technologies
    This tutorial is based on LOBO, which was produced by North Carolina State University. The list of original LOBO developers can be found on their site, http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/lobo2/credits.html