We’re delighted to share the news that our new book was just published by the American Library Association: Academic Libraries for Commuter Students: Research-Based Strategies. It’s available directly from the publisher ALA Editions (among other vendors), and you can take a look at the book’s Chapter 1 and Index on the ALA website as well.

This edited volume brings brings together research by librarians and academics at public community and baccalaureate colleges and universities from across the U.S., commuter institutions and those with both commuter and residential populations. It’s been amazing to work with our talented contributors, all doing terrific work with and in support of commuter students in their libraries and institutions.

The Table of Contents is below, and there’s a press release from ALA as well. We’d love to hear your feedback, feel free to get in touch!

Table of Contents:

Chapter 1 Situating Commuter Undergraduates
Maura A. Smale and Mariana Regalado

Chapter 2 Commuter Campus in Transition: Meeting the Changing Needs of Students through Mixed-Methods Assessment
M. Sara Lowe, Willie Miller, and Paul Moffett

Chapter 3 Making Space in the Library for Student-Parents
Donna M. Lanclos and Rachael Winterling

Chapter 4 Beyond the Bubble: Undergraduate Commutes and the Library at a Flagship Public University
Juliann Couture

Chapter 5 A Decade of Research at Urban Commuter Colleges
Jean Amaral, Mariana Regalado, and Maura A. Smale

Chapter 6 “I Study in My Car:” Exploring the Study Habits of California Community College Commuter Students
Brian Greene and Elizabeth Horan

Chapter 7 Making the Library Work for Community College Commuters: The Case of Montgomery College
Tanner Wray and Nancy Fried Foster

Chapter 8 Library Instruction and Academic Success: The Impact of Student Engagement
Ted Chodock

Chapter 9 Lessons Learned from Our Commuter Students
Mariana Regalado and Maura A. Smale

We’re thrilled to share the publication of our book: Digital Technology as Affordance and Barrier in Higher Education. The book is available directly from the publisher Palgrave Macmillan (among other vendors), and you can take a look at a preview in Google Books.

The book incorporates much of our research over the past 8 years on how CUNY students do their academic work, with a particular focus on their use of technology. We learned so much about the ways that students want to and try to use technology — their own as well as college-provided — to create time for their academic work, and the ways that unanticipated barriers of technology can stand in their way.

The official book description is below. If you read it, we’d love to hear your thoughts — please get in touch.

This book explores college students’ lived experiences of using digital technologies for their academic work. Access to and use of digital technologies is an integral aspect of higher education in the twenty-first century. However, despite the tech-savvy image of them propagated by the media, not all college students own and use technology to the same extent. To ensure that students have the best opportunities for success, all in higher education must consider ways to increase affordances and reduce barriers in student technology use. This book explicitly examines urban commuter students’ use of digital technologies for academic work, on and off campus.