The authors hope readers have found Educational Psychology for Academic Librarians a useful introduction to important concepts that support improved reference and instruction librarianship. It is worth reiterating that librarians’ wisdom and experience can inform and enrich the work of educational psychologists, and we strongly encourage librarians to apply, critique, and share the concepts we’ve presented here. Please consider publishing or presenting not only at librarian conferences, but also at the conferences of organizations your collaborators are affiliated with.

Because this book was written specifically for academic librarians, we have intentionally skipped or only mentioned in passing topics typically covered in an introduction to educational psychology textbook. These topics include test construction, memory formation, language processing, early childhood development, classroom management, and research methodologies. In our opinions the library profession in general could use a better grounding in research methods, but we chose to not tackle that very large subject here. Most college campuses have many experts with whom librarians can collaborate on research projects. Collaboration with experienced researchers is an effective way to combine librarians’ insights with methodological expertise. The recommended readings provide a good starting point to identify examples of research methods that are appropriate for the study of teaching and learning information literacy.