The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is committed to bringing together museums and libraries across the country for conversations dedicated to developing a better understanding of the roles of libraries and museums as providers of public service to communities. The Future of Libraries and Museums in the 21st Century Planning…

The mere fact that a library service is being used does not mean that the service makes a difference or has a positive impact on the user. This has significant implications for Special Library and Information Services (SL&IS) that have to constantly prove that they add value. Because of the difficulty of measuring impact effectively, the…

Part of a 3-year study of the Chapter 1 Neglected or Delinquent (Chapter 1 N or D) Program providing compensatory education services to youths in state-operated juvenile and adult correctional facilities, this report presents case studies of nine facilities that have developed particularly effective programs. The study used teacher questionnaires,…

This research review analyzes output measures that assess the effectiveness of a library's reference services: reference questions, reference staff performance, reference users, combined output measures, and combined input/output measures. The need for research, a definition of reference effectiveness, and input measures are noted. Seventy-three…

This brochure provides information about projects funded in 1986 by grants under the Higher Education Act Title II-C Program, a program which assists major research libraries in maintaining and strengthening their collections, and in making their holdings available to individual researchers, scholars, and other libraries. The following information…

Arguing that user studies and performance measures provide two major approaches to evaluating the effectiveness of library services, this occasional paper presents an overview of the literature, examines the goals and approaches in user studies and performance measures, and provides suggestions for increasing the potential benefits of both by…

Prestel is an interactive videotex system which has been available to the public in the United Kingdom since the late 1970's. Recent research funded by the British Library Research and Development Department provided public libraries with access to Prestel and monitored their reactions to the services. Aims of the trial were to promote Prestel by…

Reports on an evaluation of the higher levels of California's statewide reference referral network that involved an unobtrusive method utilizing existing records of actual reference transactions evaluated by panel of judges. Reference evaluation methods, findings of other studies, and other uses of the method are discussed. (Nineteen references…

Describes adoption of microcomputer tutorial for library orientation at state-owned school of approximately 2,800 students. Highlights include advantages and disadvantages of microcomputer-assisted instruction, production of tutorial software, the program, evaluation, and revisions. Goals for library instruction and sampling of questions used to…

Five performance measures suggested for use in public libraries are discussed in relation to corporate information centers: corporate awareness of library services; clients as percentage of jurisdiction population; reference transactions per capita; reference fill rate; timeliness of information delivery. Planning and survey questionnaires for…

Use of online bibliographic databases as ready-reference sources was evaluated in five-month study at three reference areas in University of Arizona Library. Equipment and training requirements were analyzed, and statistics were collected on databases searched, costs per search, question type, and patron and staff reactions. Ready-reference…

This research project investigated the information seeking behavior of Syracuse University doctoral students in six disciplines--economics, English, geology, history, philosophy, and physics. Questionnaires distributed to 112 students elicited data from 69 respondents (61.6%) on their educational environment, search strategies, selection of…

Describes the research objectives, rationale, methodology, and findings of a model program developed at the Northwestern University Library, which examined whether online catalogs require instruction and, if so, how that instruction would be best delivered. (CLB)

This paper reports past performance data for document delivery services provided by two libraries at University of Minnesota (Walter Library, Institute of Technology Libraries) and results of survey of faculty served by these services. Differences between users and nonusers, reasons for nonuse, and correlates of extent of use are discussed. (EJS)

Presents results of survey based on sample of 500 U.S. academic libraries which was conducted during spring and summer of 1984 to gather descriptive data on current status of online searching and to predict future trends. Four broad categories are covered: availability; search service characteristics; evaluation; future trends. (31 references)…