This literature review provides an overview of outreach in academic libraries over the last five years. The review aims to centralize the common activities and general purposes of outreach while also bringing emphasis to more strategic outreach efforts such as the incorporation of learning outcomes and assessment into outreach. The review also provides commentary on how outreach can be used to affect information literacy and research.

This paper introduces the concept of web site usability, provides a brief introduction to the techniques, offers examples from two “real life” studies that show how the techniques of formal usability studies, focus groups, and card sorts can be used and offers tips and tricks for employing these techniques.